Nearly every governor in the nation made a trip to Washington, D.C. last weekend to be a part of the National Governors Association bipartisan Winter Meeting. While most governors were gathered around the capital receiving information about economic development and budgetary issues, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley decided to huddle only with fellow Republicans to bash budget alternatives and promote more drastic and more controversial cost-cutting measures. The governor decided to skip out on the nonpartisan meetings in Washington, and went straight for the meetings with the Republican Governors Association. Haley’s staff said that the $100,000 dues to remain a part of the nonpartisan group were just too high in a year with South Carolina facing budget issues. While the governor’s budget-cutting mindset should be applauded, the $100,000 fee seems almost like a drop in the bucket compared to the $700 million deficit the state currently faces.
Former Gov. Mark Sanford, Haley’s notoriously frugal predecessor, regularly attended the association’s meetings during his time in office and was even open to heading policy panel discussions during his trips to the meetings in Washington. According to an article by James Rosen in The State, Sanford viewed the organization as a very useful group that represented states’ interests to members of Congress and provided in-depth research for governors.
During her Washington trip, Gov. Haley did step away from her Republican cronies and chat with TV host Jake Tapper on “This Week,” ABC’s national political show. During her visit to the program, she joined a round table of fellow governors to talk about issues facing the states. She used most of her time to criticize Wisconsin Democrats for avoiding a vote on a budget bill aimed at stripping labor union bargaining rights for public employees. We need our governor to be looking out for the people of the Palmetto State and leave Wisconsin politics to the people of Wisconsin.
Regardless of Haley’s views on labor unions, our governor should at least be trying to work with all interests in dealing with our budgetary issues. Her theory on governing, particularly with the budget, however, seems to be that only her ideas and the views of the far right members of her party can make sense of the process.
Solving the state’s budget issues should involve bringing important details to the negotiating table and allowing both parties in the legislature, along with industry leaders and the voters, to express their ideas. The current approach is just to cut from every major program to simply show that the budget is being slashed.
The state has been living beyond its means for too long, but the only perspective, at least in the governor’s office, is to take a hatchet to the budget. We obviously need cuts, and we obviously need reforms, but when those cuts and reforms are coming from a single perspective and we don’t take time to hammer out the details, we risk our state getting hit with even bigger problems sooner rather than later.