Candidate for District 106, Brian Sweeney, sent us the following remarks after the S.C. House voted on tax cuts this week.
________________
The recent House vote to reduce South Carolina taxes and Russell Fry’s reportedly not casting a vote has caused some to ask my opinion on the whole subject of taxes. Fair question.
I am in favor of reducing taxes to the bare minimum required to fund functions that government rightly performs. Having said that, I will also say that there are a great many functions the government (Federal, State and local) has no business being involved with.
That list could go on for volumes. So, in my view, any taxes that are used to perform functions that do not need to be performed (or do not need to be performed by government) should be refunded to the tax payors.
However, this latest round of tax cutting, wherein our friends in Columbia have taken part of the Federal “Stimulus” money, that was stolen from us in the first place, to reduce state taxes is not a tax
cut. It is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I relayed these sentiments several days ago via a FB post, a copy of which is shown here. As you can see, I had the same views a few days ago as I do now.
Further, it is clear that the supposed surplus position of the State, even without the “Stimulus” money, is illusory. The State’s pension plans are underfunded by more than $30 billion. Saying that South Carolina has a surplus is as misleading as saying the U.S.
National Debt is only $30 trillion.