Do Nothing State Legislature

Talk is cheap, but we need to start making our state representatives accountable for their votes and actions – on in this case lack of action!  Remember the State of the State address in January, which touted Haley’s top priorities to get our state moving? Well, here is the status of the Do-Nothing Legislature and Absentee Leadership from the Governor!

1. Number One priority should be Education Gov Haley told us – she was going to start a conversation – she has had 2 meetings in 5 months and we are still nowhere properly funding our public education –and still languishing in the bottom 5 of elementary and secondary state school systems – and over 40% of our 9^th graders still do NOT graduate from high school 4 years later – thus having a high correlation of ending up in prison -- costing the taxpayers over $40K/year.
2. Gov Haley told us that the Number Two priority was fixing our crumbling infrastructure – now State Senator Grooms says: “I don’t think anything will pass this year,” Sen. Ray Cleary, a Murrell’s Inlet Republican who chaired the subcommittee which produced the pending road-funding plan, said he is skeptical his committee’s plan will pass this year. “Politically, I don’t think we have the leadership to go forward,” he said of the Senate’s focus on the issue. http://www.thestate.com/2013/05/23/2783039/sc-roads-bill-running-short-on.html
3. And what about the highly touted Ethics Reform??  The Senate bill is held up, and probably will not make it this year – the Aiken Standard says, “The struggle for true ethics reform in 2013 by the General Assembly has become the same old South Carolina politics at its worst…to keep the ethics reform bill from passing is the same as saying yes to “business as usual.” Doing nothing on ethics reform is inexcusable.” http://www.aikenstandard.com/article/20130523/AIK02/130529749/1015/why-is-the-sc-senate-stalling-ethics-reform

What has the Republican led dominated state legislature and Republican Governor done for the last 5 months??  What about the touted tax reform?  What about the Government Restructuring??  The State Senate did kill Medicaid expansion in a close vote -- after a final attempt by supporters who wanted to extend health insurance for the poorer populations. The vote means that our state won't accept billions of free federal aid to expand health care access to hundreds of thousands of poor South Carolinians, not to mention 44,000 health care jobs and freeing our crowded hospital emergency rooms with non-emergencies.

So what has our legislature, including OUR Senator Bennett, State Representatives Murphy and Horne accomplished on these key initiatives  -- Nothing, absolutely nothing!  Remember that in November 2014.