http://www.politicususa.com/2015/10/08/republican-legislators-dead-wrong-south-carolina-flood-disaster.html
"In a recent session, the state general assembly voted down a request of $400 million (Georgia just passed a similar bill at $900 million) for desperately needed infrastructure that had largely gone ignored for decades. Could Governor Haley’s promised veto of any bill that didn’t include a reduction in the state income tax been an influence to vote no?
Then the torrential rains started falling, the 400 million looked like a bargain. Infrastructures began collapsing like proverbial dominoes. Just like the Democrats predicted it would in such a circumstance.
Republican legislators refused to approve the expenditures out of fear of a Haley veto and because they didn’t want to raise taxes. Their reasoning was especially ironic since the business community was pushing the hardest for the upgrades and new construction. They’d figure their way around a tax increase, later. An oil company cited the extensive travel by their trucks on potholed highways. Yes, I realize a bill passed this year would not have had much, if any, impact on the flooding, but it’s still an imperative for the safety of the population.
Nobody can deny that the state was pitifully ill-prepared for Mother Nature’s tantrum of rainfall. Time ran out before adjournment, as the house and senate even failed to reach a compromise on respective gas tax increase bills that were two cents apart. South Carolina roads are basically funded by the state’s gas tax. It hasn’t been raised since 1987. My abacus calculates that’s 28 years.
About the amount of time it’ll take to clean this mess up."
