Clashing in Columbia: Sanford's view of lawmakers is distorted

The great Winston Churchill once said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

Since the end of the 2004 legislative session, I've thought about that quote a lot. There are too many misconceptions about the session and very few truths being reported.

In the final days of the session, Gov. Mark Sanford garnered many laughs with his pig stunt. He said he did it to make a point.

Point taken.

Many of us in the General Assembly have been listening to our constituents and have heard the message loud and clear. We enter next year ever sensitive to the lessons of this session.

But like all good gimmicks, the pig stunt came at a cost.

First and foremost, it came at a cost to the truth. To define the budget passed this year by the General Assembly as "pork and barrel" is like calling a fender bender the sinking of the Titanic.

In writing the House version of the budget, we took much of what the governor proposed in his own executive budget.

The governor's vetoes represented less than 1 percent of a $5.5 billion budget.

This budget also includes $53 million in tax cuts (including $39 million in new money to eliminate the marriage penalty tax) pushed for and passed by the House, thanks to the leadership of Speaker David Wilkins and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bobby Harrell. With all due respect to our governor, eliminating the marriage penalty was not proposed in his executive budget.

Furthermore, the House implemented a plan to pay off the deficit by funding it in the budget and with the Fiscal Discipline Act, as well as with the sale of fleet and land. In his executive budget, it was the governor himself who suggested using the revenue generated from the sale of this state property to pay for government services.

The South Carolina House passed 14 of the 16 bills listed as the governor's legislative priorities last session, including his centerpiece item, the Income Tax Reduction Act. In fact, the House passed this bill twice in efforts to get the Senate to pass it.

The truth is that Speaker Wilkins has led the charge in aggressively passing Gov. Sanford's agenda, and the House passed nearly every bill the governor wanted.

And in the past three years, when South Carolina was rocked by a national recession and nearly every state in the nation voted to raise taxes rather than cut government, Speaker Wilkins and House Republicans did just the opposite -- refusing to place more burden on the backs of taxpayers.

Even in the face of monumental opposition, the South Carolina House has refused to raise the cigarette tax without first reforming the Medicaid program. That's because the Medicaid portion of our budget is growing twice as fast as the rest of our state budget, consuming hundreds of millions in state and federal dollars. It is imperative that we have meaningful Medicaid reform before we consider raising the cigarette tax.

The House passed both tort and medical malpractice reform in the first two weeks of the legislative session. Administrative government restructuring, SMART education funding, conduct grades, capital access reform, charter school reform and the Sunset Commission Act were all bills supported by the governor and passed by the South Carolina House.

Speaker Wilkins and House members have worked tirelessly to deliver the Sanford agenda. A 90 percent success rate is an astonishing record that we plan to build on next year.

Bob Leach of Greenville

represents District 21 in the S.C. House of Representatives.

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