If we South Carolinians really think that the 5-cent sales tax is the best way to pay for government services, why do we insist on undermining it? A recent report for the legislative Joint Committee on Taxation found that we rely on the sales tax to pay 40 percent of the cost of state and local government - about 7 percent above the national norm. Yet as our recent three-day, sales-tax-free, back-to-school spending orgy illustrates, we take delight in ensuring that the sales tax brings in too little money to pay for public needs.

Then there are all the exemptions that legislators have slapped onto the sales tax. And thanks to the recession and galloping unemployment, S.C. consumers have reined in spending on taxable items. And we keep ordering taxable items off the Internet but evading the tax on them. No wonder S.C. revenues actually decreased this year - a rare, gloomy situation. Yet we carp incessantly at increasing reliance on the income tax and the property tax to cover public needs. The sales tax remains our "best" idea for fixing things and paying for new programs.

Indeed, one "tax-reform" proposal in Columbia would abolish the school property tax and raise rates a few pennies to pay the entire cost of public schooling with sales-tax revenue. Legislators are said to take this proposal so seriously that it actually may pass next year. Puh-leeze!

We're not saying that legislators should raise other taxes to compensate for the weaknesses of the sales tax. Tax changes should be considered only as part of comprehensive state tax reform that includes intelligently targeted spending cuts.

State government can and should be cut further. Somehow through the years, South Carolina - a relatively small state with a lot of poor residents - has amassed a huge pool of state employees and accepted a huge array of responsibilities.

For folks who claim not to like much government, we sure have a lot of it. We just don't want to pay for it. On one side of this equation or the other, something's got to give.