By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | If you think Washington is a mess these days, consider what could happen in South Carolina if Washington leaders pushed some of their turmoil onto the General Assembly. Can you imagine a scenario in which the mess would be better if Columbia got involved?
For years, conservatives have been pushing a new federalism – a shift of authority from the “big” national government to states. President Donald Trump’s newly-proposed $4 trillion budget is an exercise in new federalism. It calls for drastic cuts in federal programs and shifts of responsibility to states.
Listen to state Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, an acolyte who says the new federalism should have bipartisan appeal: “People on the ground in their own communities know far better than D.C. bureaucrats and politicians how they want to live and what they want from government. And their ability to hold local officials accountable for decisions made with their money is far greater than any degree of control they could ever hope to have with federal officials.”
Sound good? Now think more deeply and consider how it would work, particularly in tax-averse South Carolina. Several Statehouse observers fear the state legislature simply isn’t ready to take on more responsibility to deliver programs, especially if the national government hands them problems without money to go with it.
“It poses a very serious challenge for the states because they currently lack the human capital, expertise and infrastructure necessary to do this work,” notes Steve Skardon, the executive director of the state’s Palmetto Project who used to work in Washington for House Speaker Tip O’Neill.
Retired Clemson University economist Holley Ulbrich worked in Washington during the Reagan era and saw attempts to reduce the size of the federal government through funding block grants to states for various programs. But then the feds cut the funding, leaving programs in limbo.
“The real cost of devolution [of government] is to those at the margins, who will not get the services they need in many states that are keen on low taxes and minimal services,” she said. “They will lose not only health care but safe drinking water (more Flints!) and protection from rapacious and sometimes shady financial institutions.
“They are likely to lose their pension protection. Imagine devolving the minimum wage, the right to join a union, labor laws and standards to the states — it could well be a race to the bottom.”
Dana Beach, head of the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, said he feared South Carolina’s land and water would face less protection if the state took more control if the administration’s current effort to crush the federal Environmental Protection Agency is successful.
“The South Carolina legislature has demonstrated that in most respects, it does not have the political will to stand up to influential special interests intent on exploiting our environment.”
Bernadette Hampton, president of the S.C. Education Association, said public education likely would face similar perils.
“Given the track records of our legislature in addressing education concerns, it would not seem prudent for the federal government to allow our state legislature more authority with less oversight,” she said. “South Carolina has a $650 million dollar shortfall between what S.C. should have invested in education over the last 40 years.”
If the Trump administration is successful with Congress in providing more flexibility to states with less funding, states will have a crucial choice – to raise taxes or to cut services, said Governing magazine columnist Rich Greene, a principal of Barrett and Greene, Inc.
“States simply don’t have sufficient revenue streams to make up for all the federal dollars they receive,” he said. To that point: South Carolina, as many state lawmakers know, takes in far more federal dollars than it pays in taxes.
Shifting the regulatory burden might make for good campaign soundbites, but the practical impacts are fraught with alarming negative possibilities of hurting hundreds of thousands of vulnerable South Carolinians who are already hurting.
“I’m not a fan of big central government,” Ulbrich noted, “but we need a thoughtful conversation about what the role of the federal government is in ensuring liberty and justice for all, along with a bit of subsistence in terms of food, education and health care.”
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We Can Do Better, South Carolina!
This article assumes everything the Federal government is doing now is sustainable.
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