SAM ARRON CHECKS IN (SCPOLICYCOUNCIL.ORG) 7/14/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:26

But I just love the top sentence, the starting sentence is sometimes when you win you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win. And it's it's so true, like you said, with this ongoing budget debate. Where are we with the South Carolina budget? And why do you think that that um that old saying rings true?

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Yeah, so I think that that really just rings true in this current budget debate. So today we have a conference committee that takes place at 11 a.m. this morning, and that's really where we're gonna see what direction this goes in. Uh the recommendations that we we put forth in in that article that you referenced, uh, we say the best result for the taxpayer would just be if you don't pass a budget and you just let right now our fiscal year just started on July 1st, and we didn't have a new budget yet passed, so we have what's called a continuing resolution in place. And that continuing resolution is just basically the budget from last year, but applied to this year with an updated year. So it doesn't increase any agency budgets or anything like that. And the net result is it saves the taxpayer about a billion dollars in general funds. Um, so that's that's huge. You know, you can use all that money to cut taxes. Um, so currently there's a little bit of a an impasse on the budget debate, and you have, you know, the the Senate wants to uh focus on expanding property taxes for seniors, and the House wants more earmarks. Uh I believe right now the the House earmark list is close to $350 uh million dollars, while the Senate is about $150, maybe less than $150, maybe like $120 million. Um so our proposal is the ideal is you just wouldn't pass it to save the taxpayer all the money. But if you're gonna pass it, get rid of all the earmarks. That's almost half a billion dollars that you could save just like that. Um and and we think that would be a really effective way to you know be a good steward of the taxpayer dollar, uh, especially with the lack of transparency that revolves around earmarks. I mean, the the average person, the average uh policy person like myself, you know, we can't really provide the scrutiny required whenever we're looking at um the earmarks because there's no specificity. It just says, you know, whatever county or municipality it is, and then whatever the the project is, like emergency center or whatever, which like maybe you do need an emergency center in Berkeley County or whatever, but like how do I know that this isn't just like some shady deal where you know no shade to Berkeley County, not vetted uh, but yeah. How do how do I know who the contractor is going to be on this project? You know, when you're awarding uh several hundred thousand dollars in contract, even a million-dollar contract, there there just has to be additional scrutiny.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, absolutely. And um, and that's what you guys do. I mean, you guys are the watchdogs and you point these things out, and you're like, okay, well, this congressman is or or this uh representative is trying to bring home money for a need in the community. And sometimes, like you said, it it could be for a a good cause, but you don't know what the process is. Like you know, and this money seems to go home unchecked, and why do we even have that? And why bother having a budget at all if people are allowed to take home uh money which will eventually translate into possibly votes down the road, right? I mean that's really kind of it could be a thing that they're doing like a like a pet project for oh, maybe getting in favor with a certain group for election time.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

I mean, that's probably Yeah, you're exactly correct. Um when you look at it, you know, I think there used to be a legitimate argument in favor of earmarks, right? The argument was, well, if we don't have them out in the open, what's gonna happen is they're gonna go, you know, around back and they're gonna talk to the agency and they're gonna say, hey, agency, I want you to pick this contract and do that. That was that was the concern. But I believe it was last year, it might have been the year before. Big master passed an executive order that basically said if if anyone is doing that, the agency is like obligated now by the executive order to essentially like rat on that lawmaker, and you know, they're gonna be met with an ethics violation. So that's kind of closed. So now I think it's totally fair game to say we shouldn't have earmarks at all. Um, and as I'm sure you talked about last week with Rick Brundret of the Nerve, you know, when he went to scrutinize all of these uh projects, he filed a freedom of information request, and they essentially told him you can't look at these documents because they're what they call working documents, right? But what that what what does that actually mean? What that actually means is you don't get to review where they're sending taxpayer dollars until after they pass it because they're still working on it. That's the most insane thing I've ever heard in my life. I mean, like, there there has to be a way for you know censor whatever information is like proprietary or whatever, but like let the public and the policy people see where the money is going. I mean, I think that's such a reasonable request.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

You think? So what happens next? Uh where are we in this process?

SPEAKER_02 5:36

So we've got this conference committee meeting today, and and a conference committee has three members from each chamber and they meet and they kind of work out the details. So basically, we're gonna see what they've decided. If they've if they've reached an agreement and they have you know some sort of concurrence of we're gonna do property taxes, but we're not gonna do earmarks or whatever, then they're gonna you know pass the budget out, and then it'll go before both chambers and the Senate in the House get an upvote or a down vote, but that's it, no amendment. And if they if they get you know a majority in both chambers, then it goes to the governor's desk to get signed. Um but if they don't reach an agreement, it's it's anyone's guess where it goes, you know. I mean, they could they could meet again next month, they could wait until September. You there's there's just no real way of knowing. Um I have an inkling though that there will be some sort of agreement. I think that you know, representatives in both state and federal government, they don't like when you enter this kind of territory where you have like a continuing resolution or like in Washington, whenever there's a shutdown, right? Like they understand that like that's not really good politics. They don't want that to be the result, so they want to pass something out. So I think it's just gonna be, you know, who's gonna end up capitulating on it? Is is the House gonna say, okay, I guess we won't do earmarks this year, or what? Because if that's that's I what I think the major concession is. I think um you've got that $350 million in earmarks, and it's like, okay, we would like the earmarks, but it's either earmarks or nothing, right? And I think that if you if you look at that analytically from a House perspective, it's like they have legislative priorities that they've increased agency budgets for that they want to see go through. So I I don't think that they're gonna, you know, just throw the whole thing out just so they can get some earmarks because it's it's either it's either, you know, something in no earmarks or nothing at all, you know, and I don't think nothing at all will be the result. So I think we'll probably have some sort of agreement that limits earmarks in some respects.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Okay. All right. And uh before we run out of time, we're speaking with Sam Aron, the policy analyst for SCPolicyCouncil.org. What do you think is going what do you think is the main really issue? Uh you know, we just went through this gubernatorial election, we're gonna be heading into the general. It's gonna be Democrat versus Republican. We are, you know, we have the passing of Lindsey Graham, our senator. Uh we have a primary that's going to be come up coming up with that, and and his sister Darlene has been appointed as interim uh until the end of the year. Uh what do you think are the main issues that are gonna arise um now that we're going to have a primary with someone who's not an incumbent in this position for and it's been quite some time?

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Well, you know, I think it's a great question. I think uh Lindsay Graham, just purely due to his tenure as well as you know his position of seniority on Senate Judiciary, uh, I think he probably did a lot for South Carolinians kind of in the background that like we didn't know about, right? Getting you know manufacturing kind of taking place in our state, that sort of thing. Um so I think that's gonna be the major question, right? It's gonna be what can you do that will help South Carolinians? Now, uh additionally, uh Senator Graham, I would say his chief issue was always foreign policy. You know, he was a foreign policy hawk. Uh like agre agree or not, you know, he thought that we should just destroy all of our enemies entirely, you know. Um so I think that philosophically, foreign policy is going to be a subject of discussion and it's gonna see you know where where people are, you know. Uh I know a lot of people weren't super pleased with Graham, but you know, he seemed to really clean up every single time he faced a primary challenger. Um so South Carolinians were voting for him. Uh so I mean they they clearly supported at least uh a a sizable percentage of the policies that he stood for.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah. I mean we I have seen that, you know, he voted this past um legislation uh cycle of the 119th Congress. Uh 98 percent with the Republicans. I mean, a lot of people like to call him names like you know, Warhawk and all these different things. But uh a lot of people who actually know what he did say basically what you said. There's a lot of things that he and he always kept his head above the fray. He never played in the mud with the pigs. He just uh he stayed at a high level and just was doing things that were so important on the world stage, and he knew how these things globally global uh issues were impacting or could impact our safety-wise or financially or you know, any of those things. So yeah, we we have uh big issues to get filled here in the next couple of months. Um how does that um impact what you do? Uh how closely do you watch what Senators do um when it comes to how that plays into local politics or the local legislature? Because we saw the big beautiful bill, the South Carolina version, get dumped. You know, we see things that uh we struggle with in a supermajority Republican uh state legislature that should be a no-brainer otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I could I couldn't agree more. You know, uh I think uh Wincy Graham really he represented kind of like the old school Washington that was like Republican priority, that's what I care about. And I'm he was just a hardline partisan fighter. Um, you know, and and when the Republicans were working on something good, it was great. You know, you saw that in the uh the nomination of of Kavanaugh, Justice Kavanaugh. Um you know, he really went to that forum. I I I definitely pay attention to federal office when it comes to how that sort of trickles down and affects state policy, right? You look at something like the SAVE Act, that's gonna affect elections all across the country. So that's something that you know you you have to pay attention to, even if, you know, I'm not necessarily working on any sort of report detailing that subject. Um, but also, you know, most people interact with politics through their federal representatives, right? They when they think politics, they're not thinking of, you know, District 17's state house representative. They're thinking of like Donald Trump. You know what I mean? So whenever you talk about federal politics, those issues do somewhat define what the state is going to focus on. Um, I think it's really interesting. I think we're probably gonna see a very similar, not necessarily the field similar, but a similar style primary to how our recent Republican governor uh gubernatorial primary was. I think it's probably gonna be a crowded field and you're gonna have a lot of people in there. So it's gonna just really see like who can make the runoff and uh and then get a majority in the runoff.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Okay. Well, Sam, thank you so much, Sam Arron. You can find his work at scpolicycouncil.org. Anything else you'd like to add about what you guys do?

SPEAKER_02 12:54

I think we covered it. You know, follow us on X at SC Policy Council if you want to keep up with today's budget hearing.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

All right, very good. Well, we look forward to that coverage. Uh take care and we'll talk to you next time.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Alrighty, thank you, you two.