H2 - Representative Jackie Terribile discussed the South Carolina budget and controversial line-item earmarks on The Charlie James Show.

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Transcript Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Song O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea! Charlie James: America is back! Yes sir, and we are back! Well, we've got a budget here in South Carolina, and I'm telling you what—you know, to me, $300 million worth of earmarks doesn't sound like a very conservative principle. Joining us right now is Representative Jackie Terribile. How are you doing, Jackie? Jackie Terribile: I'm great, Charlie. How are you doing? It's good to be on the show. Charlie James: I am doing fantastic. Now, you posted over on X, you were like, "Yeah, all right, some of these earmarks were fine, but a lot of them, that was just uncontrolled spending," right? Jackie Terribile: I mean, absolutely. I mean, I agree that in our budget, we need to support tax relief, we need to support, you know, the core functions of government—public safety, infrastructure, of course. But when I got in there and I saw some of the pork and just the pet projects that were listed in those earmarks, I was shocked, even though I was warned to expect it, but I was shocked. Charlie James: So you can have all the warnings you want until you see it actually happen. So what was—I mean, we've heard that there were, you know, an orangutan enclosure, we heard that there was a home for tired artists to rest. I mean, these things... but most people don't even realize that's what our state legislature is spending our money on. Jackie Terribile: Yeah, I mean, I think that especially the way that it was done as well, you know, coming in as a separate bill that they put it as, people don't even realize that that is part of the budget, but it definitely is. And we as legislators have to vote on the entire package, so it's not like I can go in there and say, "Well, I like these things, but I don't like these, let's take them out." No, we are forced to vote on everything or nothing, and that's really the choices that we get. Charlie James: Yeah, which is kind of crazy. So explain this, because all of the... they were all put in like at $1? Jackie Terribile: Well, that's in, yes, in the budget they were listed as line items in the budget. But then we were brought back in a special session to vote on a package of the earmarks. So, you know, there were some of us who thought, "Okay, well, that's it, we're not going to get called back, we're not going to do earmarks this year." We didn't do them last year, and so we thought that was what was going to happen. But then they said, "No, you're coming back on Tuesday, and we've got this package of earmarks, and you're going to vote on it." And so, not a lot of time, and not a lot of real transparency, in my opinion. Charlie James: Very little transparency on that. And that is probably the most shocking thing of all. I've got this clip of Micajah Caskey talking to Sarita Edgerton, and I want you to listen to it, because it's pretty shocking. Micajah Caskey (Clip): You will find that there is no provision requiring you to actually read anything. And I think that after the short couple weeks you've been with us, you'll find that too often, nobody reads anything. Charlie James: Okay, so if nobody is reading anything in Columbia, who's making the decisions? Jackie Terribile: Well, this was put together by, you know, the Ways and Means Committee and just a small number of legislators who are deciding what's going to be in this package and what's not. And so, you know, and then of course it's, how do they determine what these things are? And not every legislator who puts in something for their district gets it, and so then they give it to us. And I l ...

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