South Carolina’s free-spending legislative branch agreed to terms on a 2026-2027 state budget, six weeks after the fiscal year began. The massive $42.7 billion spending plan represents a $3.53 billion (9%) increase over the previous year’s budget and includes wasteful spending on non-core functions of government.
Details of the Budget
Both chambers of the S.C. General Assembly are controlled by Republican supermajorities, and the governor’s office and every statewide elected position is occupied by either a Republican or a GOP appointee. However, this has not translated into fiscally conservative governance. The compromise approved last month marked a major defeat for Palmetto State taxpayers, who are struggling to make ends meet as their leaders blow virtually every penny of new money on bloated bureaucracy and dubious economic development deals.
One silver lining in the spending plan is the removal of approximately $378 million in pork barrel expenditures contained in previous iterations of the budget. That money will remain unappropriated and available for tax relief in the coming fiscal year. Senators also pumped the brakes on a controversial $150 million corporate welfare handout for Scout Motors, which has already received $1.3 billion in incentives from Palmetto State taxpayers.
State representatives and senators agreed on the budget, but there was no love lost between the two chambers. State representative Stephen Frank told House ways and means chairman Bruce Bannister, ‘You are not my enemy – you are occasionally my political opponent. The Senate is my enemy.’ Bannister replied, ‘I agree with that,’ and then accused state senators of hiding earmarks in the state budget.
State representative James Teeple was even more outspoken in his criticism of senators, who rejected an appropriation that would have funded cancer treatments for firefighters. ‘They do not care whether firefighters live or die,’ Teeple said of the Senate. ‘We will have the empty boots of 500 dead firefighters because of their inaction.’
Original reporting: FITSNews — read the source article.
