General Assembly ends session, boredom to ensue
Thursday, the S.C. General Assembly called it quits for the year, with a June 16 get-together to iron out a few details.
The headlong sprint to the finish line has not been without its great moments, like Rep. Thad Viers suggesting that Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer return to “giving out blankets to old people,” Sen. Lee Bright making a fool of himself (isn’t this done on a daily basis?) and Gov. Mark Sanford thinking that somehow, he knows what he is doing.
For yet another year, the private school choice bill went down in flames, and the quicksand nature of the legislative process delayed concerted efforts to finally regulate payday lending and raise the cigarette tax. However, bills not finding their way out of the legislature will be carried over to next January. The GOP leadership found a silver lining in the process: being able to get through the state’s fiscal issues and pass a sound budget.
“Republicans in both the House and Senate held strong by resisting all efforts to raise taxes and instead cut government spending in order to pass a balanced budget,” Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell said in a statement. “The last thing our economy needs right now is a crippling tax increase. Previous recessions have showed us that preserving our past tax cuts, focusing on job creation and cutting spending leads to a faster and bigger recovery for our state’s economy.”
Senate Democratic Minority Leader John Land laid the blame of not being able to pass some of the high-priority bills squarely with the Governor.
“This session will be remembered more for what didn’t get done than what did. And the blame lies solely at the feet of Mark Sanford. From inside and outside the chamber, Sanford and his dozen Senate supporters stunted progress,” Land said in a statement. “Instead of passing a cigarette tax for health care, Gov. Sanford’s Senate supporters bogged down the chamber with useless legislation and petty filibusters. And the Governor’s foolish refusal to accept our stimulus dollars needlessly prevented the Senate from doing anything of substance.”
And now, silence, boredom, fundraising. We’ve got the Sanford suit to look forward to, but otherwise this is looking like the college football offseason. That means, long stretches of nothing, interspersed with legal issues, mini-scandals, and Lane Kiffin racking up violations on Twitter.
After all, well-behaved politicos rarely make good copy.
