Not sure what to make of this latest initiative by the S.C. Senate leadership:
S.C. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, and Majority Leader Harvey Peeler filed a bill today to create the Commission on Streamlining Government and Reduction of Waste that will work to streamline and pare down the size and growth of state government. The need of state government to be downsized has been long overdue. This major restructuring effort would be led by lawmakers and private sector business leaders.
Pondering that, I conclude that least one of the following is true:
- Lawmakers have spent so much time fighting with Mark Sanford that, without noticing it, they have become infected with his peculiar cognitive disorder. Only a person completely blinded by ultra-libertarian ideology could look at South Carolina — with its painfully underfunded basic services (from highway safety to infrastructure to prison security to mental health safety net to rural schools to higher education) — and conclude that what THIS state needs is streamlining, and less gummint. That’s a fine theory, if you live in Massachusetts. But it’s grotesquely inappropriate in a state that has NEVER bitten the bullet and provided the sort of government basics that most other states — you know, the states that are so far ahead of us in income and man-made amenities — take for granted.
- Political rhetoric is so dumbed-down and degraded in South Carolina that experience has taught them that you have to mumble these phrases no matter what you plan to do, to keep the yahoos calm. Maybe the senators actually plan to “streamline” government in rational ways — such as eliminating the long ballot or making executive agencies political accountable, and they’re just using the anti-gummint language to slip it past the forces of inertia. Unfortunately, there’s not a single word in this release to lead us to that conclusion. Also, this release is written by Glenn McConnell, the sworn enemy of restructuring.
- Someone has kidnapped our senators and replaced them with Pod People. This would explain why they have completely forgotten that about all they have been doing the past two years is cutting already underfunded services more and more deeply. Or why they seem to have forgotten their bitter fight with Sanford over the stimulus money that they knew our state desperately needed.
- Sen. Leatherman et al. encourage Sen. McConnell to go on these dead-end tangents so they don’t have to hear more about the Hunley and his 17 historically accurate Civil War re-enactor costumes.
Whichever explanations are true, I know I’ve had enough of this utter nonsense. Perhaps most offensive (to common sense) of all is this statement from Sen. McConnell:
“Many state agencies were created in a time when our needs as a state were very different,” McConnell said. “We shouldn’t keep spending money on something that has long since outlived its usefulness.”
Which of course causes any rational person to respond, “Such as…” But there’s never a such as. No way are they going to start a backlash by naming any actual government programs as having “long since outlived it’s usefulness.”
Which is beyond bizarre. Think about it, people: How long has Glenn McConnell been in office? Since before Hector was a pup. And yet, in all those years in which downsizing has “been long overdue,” you would think he’d have a long list of governmental functions that are irrelevant and wasteful. But he doesn’t mention a single one.
That’s because, to the extent that these guys have a rational, clear goal, it is this: To lower taxes. That’s it. They don’t want government to be more efficient or relevant; far from it. They just want it to cost less, and less, and less, until you can drown it in a bathtub. Theirs is a nihilistic philosophy of social destruction. This is why they advocate such mindless mechanisms as caps on spending: They can’t come up with things that we can do away with, so they keep up the pressure to keep shrinking the whole pie, starving the essential services along with the superfluous (assuming there are any superfluous programs left, which you would think they could name if there were). This has the benefit — from their point of view — of making all government ineffective, thereby even less popular, so you can cut it even more.
I can always give you examples of things that have been cut too much (as I did above) because they are legion. If these guys are going to continue running our state in keeping with their nihilistic philosophy, then they need to start telling us what it is that needs to be cut. Just for starters. Why have they been allowed to get away with not doing that for so long? Simple. Because we let them.
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Your arguments would have more merit if the facts didn’t negate them.
Spending on education (higher and public) has increased significantly over the years without any measurable improvement.
How about posting the total spending by the South Carolina government over the past decade and show us where it has been cut.
All the money that would be required to do all the things you think the government should do is already there. It’s just spent on stuff that doesn’t matter.
Until you come on board with term limits, you may as well continue tilting at the windmills, Don Quixote. The problem is right there in front of you but you can’t give up on your idealistic fantasy republican government theory to see it.
Think about it, people: How long has Glenn McConnell been in office? Since before Hector was a pup.
Doug, I say thank God there are no term limits. Where would SC be without McConnell now? All that experience has made him suuuuuch a better representative.
/s
Here’s actual data that disproves your claim that spending has been cut.
Real verifiable data.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1998_2009&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy10&chart=F0-total_20-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=l&title=&state=SC&color=c&local=
So spending has increased and yet things are worse. Pretty easy to figure out that freeing up more government money and putting it into the hands of the people who own it might work better.
And if you look at the data, you will see that while SC’s GDP has grown by 50% in the past decade, government spending has doubled. That’s not a good trend.
Doug I’ll give you a better example. In the early 80s, the South Carolina Department of Highways and Public Transportation (SCDHPT) operated out of a five story building on Park Street. There were actually a few empty offices along with room for a huge office supply unit, a huge Patrol supply unit and a large print shop. Plus there was a public service area where folks could register their vehicles or renew their drivers license. SCDHPT was an umbrella agency for all the road construction, maintenance, highway patrol and DMV functions. All of the payroll, IT, human resources, accounting and other support functions were housed in this building. The parking garage was not full to capacity and there was even a motorpool operated on the next block. Pretty efficient agency really.
Today the entire patrol and DMV functions are gone from the Park Street building. Those operations are now housed in a huge office complex in Blythewood 15 miles from downtown Columbia. Only the construction and maintenance functions remain on Park Street. There is no longer an office supply unit, nor is there a print shop. If you want to renew your license you will have to drive to Shop Road or Ballentine. People are crammed into tiny cubicles with little room to move.
Yet South Carolina builds few roads today. The Patrol may be back up to staffing levels it enjoyed in the late 80s after a sharp drop in the late 90s but it’s way down based on miles of travel or the number of licensed drivers. Likewise road maintenance crews are chronically understaffed.
So why does a building that once had ample room for 3 agencies now find itself undersized for one? And, that one has less overall work responsibility than it did in the bustling road building 60s and 70s. I’ll tell you why. It’s because of the irresponsible restructuring act of 1992 along with a mind numbing growth in employment that contributes little to the service level provided to the people of this state. It damn sure isn’t because of too little money spent.
Like Brad, I would like to see more resources devoted to safety, education and infrastructure maintenance but until we understand how inefficient state government really is we will never improve service delivery through spending increases alone. Too bad we can’t undo the damage of the 1992 restructuring fiasco. That would be a great place to start improving state governement. But if the general assembly ever gets rolling on a new restructuring bill we may end up even worse off.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Implement a flat tax with only one variable: number of dependents. If you want to have two rates, fine. One at twice the poverty level and another at ten times the poverty level.
Eliminate all car property taxes and increase the gas tax instead.
Mandate that X% of revenues go directly to highway construction and improvment.
Eliminate ALL sales tax loopholes except food and medicine and drop the rate back to 5%. Start with the asinine 1/2% tax break for people over age 85 (whoever came up with that idea should be immortalized in the Government Hall Of Stupidity — it’s a big building)
Replace property taxes with a flat per dwelling fee.
Now you’re making good sense, Doug — you’re advocating what I’ve been pushing for for years, comprehensive tax reform. We need it, badly. We can quibble about the particulars, but there’s no doubt that the system needs an overhaul.
But we’ll never get it from people who won’t dig in and make tough choices — from politicos who repeat the mantra of “small gummint,” but who can’t even name to you an agency they’d do without. Who don’t care how the tax system is structured, or whether its fair, or stable, or adequately funds the legitimate and necessary functions of government; who can’t think on a level of complexity any deeper than they just want less taxes, period. Because, like children, they and the people who vote for them just don’t like paying them, and they are incapable of understanding that there are certain prices you pay for living in a rational civilization (something that is light-years away from us here in SC).
@ Doug– Why give a break for number of dependents? You want to pump ’em out, great; have the biggest gol-danged fambly you want–but why a tax break? You’re already consuming a ton of services if you have a huge family. Flat tax is flat tax. No exceptions (like a “right to life” ban on abortion should be.)If you believe in it, walk the walk straight, no fiddles.
Flat tax is regressive in the worst way. A straight up proportionate tax that factors in the marginal propensities to save and consume — basic true needs cost the same for everyone–tax the gravy–and the more you make, the more likely you are to be having luxury gravy, so pay your share. To whom much has been given….
and my facts say that spending on higher education–at least on the University of South Carolina has been repeatedly cut, to the point that we are the least supported in the nation.
“But it’s grotesquely inappropriate in a state that has NEVER bitten the bullet and provided the sort of government basics that most other states — you know, the states that are so far ahead of us in income and man-made amenities — take for granted.” Amen. If you do the same, you get the same. Why is it so hard to imagine that if we’d stop doing our own ornery thing, maybe we wouldn’t have to keep thanking God for Mississippi? Maybe emulate some of the states nearer the top of the “good” rankings? Other Deep South states that staggered through the Reconstruction and subsequent economic hard times have managed to pull past us. Maybe it IS time to change course and RAISE taxes [gasp], increase spending on education and infrastructure and the other things that make a state attractive to the smart folk with money who might want to take advantage of our lovely climate and start a company here–not the ones who make us compete with China and Malaysia for the cheapest deal on labor and rent —quality investment that yields sustainable jobs!
and Doug–that’s a dot-com website. How about a link to a dot-gov one, or a dot-edu one?
Kathryn,
Are you seriously going to suggest a “.com” website lacks credibility?
Could it be that a .com can do the job better than .gov?
The website explains all the sources of its data. In fact, if you look at the sources listed, the data for state spending comes from…. ta da…
http://www.census.gov/govs/estimate/
Still don’t believe it?
Looking forward to seeing your data on the decreased funding for USC. Hope it includes all the now worthless LIFE scholarship money that USC magically ate up with tuition increases.
And on “regressive” taxes – can you provide an example of where a flat tax has been implemented and it resulted in a worse situation of wealth disparity than what we have now?
People need to pay proportional taxes so they will do what they can to improve themselves. The current system gives too many a free ride which results in lower motivation.
While Doug makes a valid point about increasing educational spending, what SC really needs is a sea-change in its attitude toward education and learning. Just one factoid among many: Among states with roughly comparable populations, the number of public libraries is as follows: Wisconsin, 458; Minnesota, 359; Oregon, 215; Washington, 332; Oklahoma, 204; Alabama, 286; South Carolina, 186. That tells you something about SC’s priorities.
Way to go, Kathryn! Having once been a Dougite myself, it has been mind-opening to spend a lot of time with Europeans, and experience their system over many years. Not all is good, but the fact is that Mr. Potter is the de-facto head of the libertarian-capitalism-is-everything folks in the U.S. That whole thinking needs to be transformed with a good dose of social responsibility.
Long live Brad, the Unparty, and perhaps, one day, a transformation of our political landscape from one of pure individualism to responsible corporate behavior.
Speaking of Brad, I thought of him while I was whizzing down the Autobahn the other day. It is nice that there is one place in the world where one can still drive fast, though they need to slow down when hitting fog banks.
Interesting also how the news media here is full of the Copenhagen conference. Did it even cause a blimp in the US news? What I find interesting is that German evangelicals are pro global warming initiatives, which gives me hope that one day my fellow evangelicals in the U.S. will begin to rethink these issues.
Of course when it comes to saving gas usage on the Autobahn, well, then Copenhagen probably goes out the window. Still, gas costs, according to the foreign exchange rate I got for cash at the airport, $9.50 per gallon here, so that probably helps reduce consumption more than anything else . . . .
Long live Brad, the Unparty, and perhaps, one day, a transformation of our political landscape from one of pure individualism to responsible corporate behavior.
We have neither pure individualism nor responsible corporate behavior in this country and whether you want one or the other or both, you need to realize we’re never going to get it. Same goes for the concept of Unparty. Partisanship will always dominate this country and further, there will never be third parties of significance.
Some of you need a healthy dose of reality.
/apathy
Steve,
I would have no problem with taking 20% of the overhead wasted on public education right now and funneling it into libraries. The library system in Richland County is one of the bright and shining stars of local government. It serves a purpose and doesn’t seem to be as bloated and wasteful as our school system.
@ Doug– I think that a commercial website needs to be taken with a grain of salt, or more, and undigested data from the census doesn’t help much. I do trust the MayoClinic.com and WebMD.com, but not so much as nih.gov. I certainly view other .com medical websites with skepticism until I find out who’s behind them.
I believe USC President Harris Pastides when he tells me that funding is at an all time low.