News and Press Releases for April 2007

Back to April 2007 Releases

4/25/2007

Gov. Sanford: Senate Budget Grows More Irresponsible by the Day

Budget Robs from Medicaid Program, Sets State Up for Fiscal Crisis

Columbia, S.C. - Governor Mark Sanford today joined with fiscally conservative Senators as the Senate headed into its final day of budget deliberations to urge fiscal sanity in the state's spending plan before it's too late.

Yesterday, the Senate voted to pull $25 million out of Medicaid funding - a program that provides healthcare to the state's neediest residents. While some purport that the money is for tax relief, the move effectively allows the Senate to continue funding projects like the green bean museum and local festivals at the expense of the state's poorest citizens. Senator Leatherman claimed in one news story today that he was forced to snatch funds from the Medicaid program because he "couldn't find anywhere else to get it" - despite a majority of the Senate voting to keep the green bean museum funded in the budget.

The budget slight-of-hand employed by the Senate yesterday also brings the budget's level of annualizations - the practice of paying for year-after-year promises with one-time money - to a whopping $267 million. That effectively means that the state's tax revenues will have to grow by four percent just for the state to break even next year, and will have to grow by substantially more than that just to pay for ongoing needs like healthcare, law enforcement and education. By contrast, the national economy is growing at roughly 2.5 percent annually.

"Just when you thought the Senate budget couldn't get any worse, it's gone from bad to flat-out irresponsible," Gov. Sanford said. "The worst part is that we've seen this movie before - just a few years back, annualizations and overall spending grew at such an unsustainable rate that the state had to make cuts in education, healthcare and law enforcement that directly impacted almost every South Carolinian. Even worse, this is happening under the direction of Senators who claim to be Republicans. What the Senate is contemplating could very well take South Carolina over a cliff with respect to spending, and I'd urge fiscally conservative allies in the Senate as well as every taxpayer to make their voices heard on the need to spend responsibly."

Despite $1.3 billion in new money coming into Columbia this year, the Senate is only providing $54 million in legitimate tax relief to hard-working South Carolinians. By contrast, the governor's spending plan called for $205 million in income tax relief, while the House's spending plan called for more than $80 million in income tax relief.