I’ve consistently been telling the audience of Common Cents just how aggressive secular-progressives have become in attacking South Carolina.
As I’ve stated time and again, these activists attack the Palmetto State because we remain a stronghold for pro-faith and family values in this country.
If secular-progressives can topple the culture of a state like South Carolina, it would represent a major victory in the march to remake America into a secular-social state. That’s why those of us who believe in our state’s commitment to faith, family and free-enterprise must redouble our efforts to build a movement for the values that make South Carolina so special. Read on

by Senators Lee Bright (R-Roebuck), Shane Martin (R-Pauline) and Kevin Bryant (R-Powdersville)

The SC Senate, led by the RINOcrat majority, just hours ago took out a $500m mortgage under the guise that it’s the only way that South Carolina can address its infrastructure needs. Now “mortgage” isn’t the term that we used when we argued against this borrowing of Chinese Yuan. “Mortgage” is the term that one of our colleagues used to justify the beeping dump truck that just backed up to your kids’ future. That term, actually, succinctly illustrates the very problem that we identified.

A mortgage, as we always have understood it, is when an individual applies their credit and their future earnings to a purchase for themselves, or for someone for whom they’ve decided to use their credit. The RINOcrat majority, to the contrary, used your credit and your money—and your kids’ money—for that purchase. A mortgage, furthermore, is a vehicle that people use when they don’t have the cash on hand to make the purchase. An individual rarely if ever takes on debt when they have an equivalent amount of cash to make the purchase. They certainly don’t spend their money first on cars and trips and other luxuries and then go into debt, or, if they do, none of us would call that fiscally responsible. And yet that is exactly what the RINOcrat majority did today in the Senate.

RINOcrats got up today and huzzahed the fact that we now have put recurring general fund dollars to infrastructure. Just six years ago (remember when we had all those surpluses?), we tried that very thing with an amendment to put $100m per year into the SCDOT for road maintenance and repair. We were decried as radical and irresponsible, but if that amendment had passed, then we now would have more US dollars in SCDOT than we put there today in Chinese Yuan. Those hundreds of millions of dollars in cash instead went to festivals and museums and other pet projects, including matches for the federal stimulus. We find it strange that the loudest yelps for borrowing come from some of the same individuals who refused to spend cash on hand when we had it.

Another element of this farce was revealed when two of the strongest proponents of financing yet another Chinese factory to compete for American jobs could not even agree on what the Yuan would be spent on. We were told at one point, very loudly and pointedly, that the Yuan would be used only for road construction. We then were told only minutes later that the Yuan would be used for road repair. The two senators in disagreement could not straighten out their stories, and so I guess like Nancy Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” Columbia is becoming every day more a little Washington on the Congaree.

The bottom line to this tragedy is that when it came time to slap around the taxpayers—and their children—RINOcrats invoked the word “crisis” and cranked up the printing presses. This $500m boondoggle adds to the earlier $120m in corporate welfare that RINOcrats borrowed to give away. The South Carolina Senate loves to spend other people’s money. That we have always known. Now, the Senate has found the path to spend the money of other people’s children, and it will become a well-worn path until the taxpayers say “NO”! The taxpayers can take their first stand by contacting Governor Haley whom we already have strongly encouraged to veto this legislation and keep more Yuan out of South Carolina. Her veto pen is our only hope. She can push “stop” on the printing press by vetoing H.3360.

We also want to thank these courageous Senators: Gerald Malloy (D-Hartsville), and Tom Corbin (R-Tigerville).

We’re going to take a break for the week, I’m sure they’re be stuff to post next week as we will probably be considering the budget conference report.