Budget should go back to the drawing board

I write to ask for your help in sending the legislative body back to the drawing board on this year’s budget. It will mean you asking that they support my vetoes this year. For a host of reasons, there has never been a more important time to do this, and let me give you a few:
If we spend every dime of the stimulus money as the legislative budget does we will end up about $650 million in the hole two years from now. We will even begin next year’s budget over $270 million in the hole. In a family this would mean before you made the first payment for the year on the mortgage, or put a single meal on the table, or paid for insurance, or any of the other many things you knew you’d have to pay for that year — you would first have to contend with your giant budget hole. Starting a year two-thirds of a billion in the hole is a financially reckless place to put our state, and is what our vetoes attempt to avoid.
If we spend ever dime, we won’t take any of the considerable monies coming to South Carolina from the stimulus (over $8 billion in total statewide impact) and use them to offset and pay down our even more considerable borrowings and obligations. We’ve asked that about ten percent of the stimulus monies, $700 million, be allocated to paying down debt. This is important because South Carolina ranks fourth in the nation in what’s allocated to paying down debt, as a full eleven percent of what is spent every year goes not to government services — but debt payment. If we did what we have proposed the first two years’ savings alone would be $168 million, and that’s money that could then be spent on teachers instead of interest payments to a wealthy bond holder in New York or Zurich. In addition to direct borrowings, South Carolina has over $20 billion in unfunded political promises to state workers and retirees. Doesn’t it make sense to pay for the government promises already on the table before you make new and additional ones?
If we spend all these stimulus monies we will paper over and avoid government restructuring vital to South Carolina’s long-term competitiveness. The problem with so-called free money out of Washington is the change it forestalls. Ronald Reagan once said that the closest thing to eternal life was a government program, and there is a truth in this because we all know of government programs that have outlived their usefulness. It’s only in rough economic times that the political will necessary to end an outdated governmental program exists. Spending this windfall of federal money would alleviate the political pressure vital to change. On this front South Carolina spends over 130 percent the U.S. average in large measure because of its unusual governmental structuring. Do we really need to be the only state in the country with a Budget and Control Board? Do we really need to start a new capitol grounds police force this year as this budget does?
If we allow the legislative body to compel the Executive Branch to spend every dime of the stimulus money — though the federal law clearly gave control over 10 percent, $700 million, to the Governor’s Office — at some point we have to ask, “Why have a governor in South Carolina?” What happens when future governors decide on a course of action that is in disagreement with what the legislative body wants to do? Our Founding Fathers set up a political system designed to prevent too much power from being in any one place, and this unprecedented breach to our system of checks and balances would have far reaching implications for future Governors — whose position you might want to see enacted.
Finally, somewhere, somehow we have got to begin to redeploy some of the principles that made our nation great. This notion of stewardship — of leaving the world a better place for our children — rather than recklessly handing them the bill for the governmental services we consume today has got to be a part of this. To me that’s a good part of what the recent tea parties were about, and I think every one of us should take that thinking to our House and Senate member in asking them to support my vetoes. It would force them to go back to the drawing board on their plan that will most certainly forestall government restructuring, avoid paying down debt and set us more than three quarters of a billion dollars in the hole 24 months from now — and most people I talk to think that would be a good thing.