Governor Henry McMaster signed South Carolina’s Fiscal Year 2017-2018 Appropriations Bill, H. 3720 into law earlier this month, while also vetoing 41 provisions. In a piece titled The State Budget: What You’re Spending in 2017, the South Carolina Policy Council (SCPC) disparaged not only the $27.42 billion budget itself, for being outsized and containing “[w]aste, bad policy, etc.,” but also the process leading up to it, as indiscernible and secretive. The SCPC, founded in 1986, is a think tank whose purpose is “to publish research and analysis showing the relevance of the American republic’s founding principles: limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty and responsibility.”
The SCPC’s main criticism is that South Carolina’s government is “outpacing the economy – by a lot.” It observes that the 2017-18 budget is the largest in history, and $1.1 billion bigger than last year’s $26.3 billion budget.
