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Article published Jun 5, 2003
Legislature needs to make some hard decisions
State budget writers might have dodged the bullet for now, but the hard decisions that go with financing essential government services will be there when they return next year to the S.C. General Assembly.
Gone this year is the prospect of raising the tax on cigarettes to shore up the state's Medicaid program.
Gone is the possibility of cutting income taxes.
Gone is the chance of increasing sales taxes.
Instead, state agencies will languish, and education and health care will not be advanced by spending decisions agreed to this week by the S.C. Senate and House of Representatives.
House Minority Leader James Smith, D-Columbia, is correct in his assessment of the legislature's spending plan: "This budget is not a budget for the future of South Carolina."
The legislature simply called it quits Tuesday, adopting a budget that does maintain current levels of funding for health care and education but sidesteps the need to establish priorities of a government the size of which the economy doesn't support.
Government grew in years when the economy was strong. The legislature began new programs that demanded a bigger budget, for which there was money to spend. Then, with revenues sliding downward, the state found itself in a financial crisis. Yet, the legislature continued to spend all the money it had and then some.
Programs were begun that had no recurring financing, making future budgets harder to craft.
That's the situation the legislature again found itself in this year, and while it is fortunate that the just approved budget forces the state to live within its means, it was done with temporary patches in the form of one-time federal government handouts -- money the state will have to find a way to replace next year unless reducing the size of government.
Such moves only delay what our government leaders should have done before now. Instead, as Spartanburg Sen. Jim Ritchie said, they "gave up too easily. We never got to the hard decisions of setting priorities in government."
Members of the legislature must not let another session pass without making those hard decisions, as well as placing limits on their spending.