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South Carolina’s Governor, Nikki Haley is a Tea Party darling, a Sarah Palin favorite and touted as one of the most fiscally conservative public officials in America today. That said, it must have come as nothing less than a virtual thunderclap when here own Republican dominated state legislature voted to override Haley’s drastic cuts in Clemson University’s agricultural outreach programs and deferred capital maintenance. Clemson is a state university that relies on public funding.
Quoting the university directly: “The veto of $15 million for agricultural research in Clemson PSA was overridden by the House in a 106-3 vote and in the Senate by a 32-6 vote. The Legislature also overrode the veto of $250,000 for PSA Agency Operations by a 92-19 vote in the House and a 31-8 vote in the Senate. Legislators overrode the governor’s veto of Capital Reserve Fund spending, including $6.2 million one-time funding for deferred maintenance for Clemson. The vote was 112-1 in the House and 32-8 in the Senate.”
Thus one is left with one overriding question: If drastic cuts are considered by the far right to be the only way to attain balanced budgets, then why has the state legislature, in state as so thoroughly conservative as South Carolina, decided to hand its ultra conservative governor such an astounding rebuke and political defeat?
SJG
6/30/11
Source: Clemson University Media Relations; inside@clemson.edu
3 Comments
recommend. Indeed, it is an interesting event to ponder.
Why? possibly citizens are actually calling up their state representatives and giving them a piece of their minds. I can’t imagine any other possibility unless of course the beneficiary of that funding was ultimately to be a Wall Street corporation.
But the South Carolina has been taking some fairly progressive stances. For example, on May 25 a bill that would have provided tax credits toward subsidizing private and home school costs for students failed to pass the Republican-controlled South Carolina House by a single vote today. It was an extremely close vote nonetheless of 59 to 60.
Though several Democrats crossed over to support the measure, a handful of Republicans, including at least two who gave the appearance they would vote for the bill, ultimately voted against.
So who knows? We can hope that the tide is turning in favor of sanity and the majority as if it can happen in SC, it can happen any where.
South Carolina is a Farm State. It has a Clemson University extension office in every County that helps the Farmer’s and Homemakers with cost efficient and newer advances. It also supports a program for children called 4-H clubs that teaches kids how to raise farm animals, trees, crops, and cook.
The reps in the State House may be republican, but they know if they voted against the funding for the State University that they would no longer hold office!
In the South you don’t cut anything, anything! for a university with a prominent football team.