H2, Segment 2 - Gov. McMaster uses line-item veto to restore $150M to Scout Motors

What this episode covers

Transcript Charlie James: All right, folks. Um, I want to talk to you about something that is going on down in Columbia that every South Carolina taxpayer should be paying attention to. And this is about how the government spends your money. It's about corporate welfare, it's about accountability... and it's about a very simple question: When a billion-dollar corporation comes to South Carolina asking for taxpayer money, who is supposed to be protecting the taxpayer? According to a new report from FitsNews, Governor Henry McMaster has used a line-item veto to restore $150 million in taxpayer money to Scout Motors. Well... the line-item veto, this is usually a tool that the governor uses to cut spending, but no, no, no. Henry McMaster restored it. He used the veto, in this case, to remove provisions that had imposed additional accountability before the money could move. That's crazy. I'm telling you right now—I've made you this promise—when Henry McMaster leaves the governor's mansion in Columbia, I will post a video online of me dancing. In celebration! That is going to happen, that is my promise to you. I don't know, I might... I might do the pasodoble! You never know. But I'm going to be dancing when Henry McMaster leaves the governor's mansion, okay? So, McMaster... there was a proviso that said, "Listen, you're not getting this money unless you do all these things." And Henry: "U-u-uh, I don't think I'm going to go along with that. I'm going to go ahead and use my line-item veto to go ahead and give them folks there at Scout Motors $150 million. I don't care what anybody says about it. Hell, I'm out of here anyway!" And he did it. Now, we all know about the Scout Motors project, right? Yeah, South Carolina wants jobs. South Carolina wants investment. South Carolina wants manufacturing. And not a lot of people are against economic development, but there's a difference between economic development and what this is, and that's corporate welfare. And that's the debate we ought to be having right now. Scout Motors has already received about $1.3 billion in South Carolina taxpayer support—about $400 million of it cold, hard cash. Now we're talking about another $150 million, and that's a lot of money. "Oh, no, Charlie, that's... ah, Charlie... uh, that's an investment into..." No, no, no, no, no! Would Henry McMaster write you a check for your business? If you owned a small manufacturing company in Greenville, or had a plumbing company in Spartanburg, or you owned a restaurant or two in Anderson, could you walk into Columbia and say, "I'd like $150 million from the taxpayers"? No, you could not! And that's the problem with corporate welfare. Oh, they're always telling us, "We don't have enough money... Oh, we don't have enough money for your... Oh, no, we got to keep... We got to raise your taxes! Oh, no, no, we can't give this surplus money back to you! We don't have enough... Oh, no, we can't give you a... a... an increase in... in your homestead exemption! No, we can't do that. We got to take care of these folks over here at Scout." But somehow, when these corporations come along and they come knocking, there's always a couple hundred million available, just sitting by the wayside. So, State Senator Tom Davis inserted a budget proviso requiring the South Carolina Legislative Audit Council to examine the reasons for the cost overruns at the Scout facility. This proviso called for examining whether some costs could potentially be recovered from the responsible parties and whether systemic reforms were necessary. I agree with both! So, according to FitsNews, Davis's proviso would have prevented the bailout money from being appropriated until that review was completed and separate authorizing legislation was enacted. Now, I don't think that's unreasonable. In fact, I think that's pretty smart. You audit the books first, then you write the checks. That's how we do our household budgets, right? You don't spend $150, ...

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