What's worse than victimizing addicted S.C. cigarette smokers to raise enough money to finance the state's health care program for lower-income folks? Refinancing the already refinanced state tobacco bonds, thereby financing a critical state program with money that would be available only one time.

That's why we're reluctantly supporting Gov. Mark Sanford's proposal to raise the per-pack cigarette tax from 7 cents to 53 cents. This plan would bring in enough new money to leverage more federal money for the Medicaid plan, while booting no one out of the program. But S.C. legislators would have to promise, in return, to lower the state income tax over 15 years, thereby relying on a self-liquidating population to replace revenue from what is arguably the fairest tax on the state's books.

For all its flaws, though, this plan is better than the S.C. House proposal to resort to one-time money, again, to balance the budget. This kind of "thinking" during the past five years got the state into its current financial pickle.

We vote, with nose held, for Sanford's approach to the problem, in fervent hope that an outbreak of responsibility in Columbia will produce a responsible plan.