In the budget debate going on this session, there are a number of people who are spreading false spin on the budget that was reported favorably out of the Senate Finance Committee. One of the lines of attack was that the official budget would not fund immigration enforcement.
Sen. Larry Martin, who was a leader on tighter immigration enforcement last year, was none too happy about the accusations that were an attempt to “blindside” him and the Senate last Friday.
“As I’m driving back to Pickens, I get a call from the liaison at LLR telling me there’s a letter that will be in my email account very shortly, if it’s not there already, at five o’clock, explaining the agency’s position on the immigration funding issue, verified, suggesting to me nothing changed in that, but it was a four-page letter,” he said. “Obviously, when he told me it was a four-page letter, I got a little bit concerned, senator from Clarendon. Why does it take a four-page letter to explain that to me, basically to confirm what I had already said and what had already been discussed? Well, then, as I am about to get on my lawnmower, to mow my grass, I didn’t think anything of it.”
Martin was in the process of the domestic chore of mowing his lawn when Tim Smith of the Greenville News gave him a call. Smith had already received the email. Smith told Martin that, according to the email, the Senate Finance budget did not fund immigration enforcement. Martin made an attempt to set him straight, but the misleading spin already had an effect on that weekend’s story.
Martin, recalling the event on the Senate floor on Tuesday, reiterated his bona fides from the immigration bill last year.
“I wanted to make sure it was funded,” Martin said of immigration enforcement. “That was my total objective. It should have been obvious to anybody. But, now, the blogs are coming out, portraying me as the water boy for the Finance Committee, but, I can’t imagine, Mr. Chairman, me being accused of that. But, I’m trying to somehow carry water for the Finance Committee on this issue, and it’s our intention, ol’ senator from Pickens, senator from Cherokee, it’s their intention not to fund the immigration bill enforcement. That’s the email that’s going around the state right now.”
The senator from Pickens recalled that as of last Thursday, there was reassurance from LLR that the Senate Finance budget fully funded immigration enforcement, and that the information put out in the email last weekend was misleading.
Sen. Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, made remarks on the floor that he believed Gov. Mark Sanford’s chief of staff Scott English gave the go-ahead on the email attack on the official Senate budget.
