PAULINE, SC (May 06, 2013) –

Funds to Repair & Maintain Roads

The Senate Finance Committee last week passed out an omnibus bill to the full Senate that, among other things, borrows $1.3 billion and raises the gas tax 20 cents by tying it to inflation. I am glad that they included my bill to send vehicle tax money directly to road funding in this omnibus bill, but I simply cannot support piling more debt onto our children and grandchildren or asking you to pay more for your gas when your money should be spent more wisely. I’m even more discouraged that this big tax/big debt bill was passed by so-called Republicans.  Just two weeks ago they voted to add $120 million in debt for Boeing without even seeing the first detail on a piece of paper. Hopefully we can defuse this plan by being fiscally responsible and allocating the recurring dollars that we have available to fix this problem.  It will, however, require the Senate to drop “pet” projects and prioritize the budget like I have advocated for years!

Mental Health and the 2nd Amendment

Some of you may know that I temporarily held up H. 3560 which is supposed to make us safer by turning over to the federal government the names of individuals adjudicated as “mentally defective” in order that those individuals might be flagged during background checks. The term “mentally defective” sounds bad, but it is the correct, legal language that is used in the bill.  There was too much loose language in the original bill, such as references to “character” and provisions allowing people other than judges to rule someone “mentally defective.”  The bill was well-intentioned, but I had some amendments passed to fix the loose language and remove some of the unintended consequences.  Even though the bill was made more palatable, I still voted against the final bill.  Another senator made the point crystal clear after losing the vote on his amendment to ban “mentally defective” individuals from other potentially lethal activities; when he said that the bill wasn’t at all about safety but just another “gun grab”. I agreed, and I therefore opposed the bill.  We need to prevent “mentally defective” individuals from purchasing weapons and also from hurting themselves and others, but we must find the right way to solve the problem without impacting the liberties of others.

“Obamacare” Nullification in the Senate

The House passed last week, on the last day possible, H. 3101, also known as “The South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act”. You and I know it simply as the Nullification of Obamacare. I am not amused that the House waited until the last minute to pass this bill, but they often do that in order to ensure its failure in the Senate (where one month is a lifetime) and thereby claim the moral high ground. I for one, however, will push as hard as I can to get that bill up for a vote. I made the motion on the day that it came over to put H. 3101 on the calendar without referring it to committee. That takes unanimous consent, and a Democrat blocked it, but I will press on with other conservatives who know what Obamacare can do, and already is doing, to our economy. It will be an uphill fight, but we must fight it, and here too we’ll see just how Republican we are in the South Carolina Senate.