Weekly column from South Carolina Statehouse Report -- your personal legislative forecast

OCT. 21, 2007 - - If the plan for South Carolina politicians is to shrink state government by starving it, then it's working.

Yes, this year's budget was larger than ever before - - some $7 billion in state tax funds alone. But the huge influx of $1.4 billion in new revenue isn't lasting. Next year, an economic downturn highlighted by higher interest rates and slow housing sales will force the state into a shortfall that could approach $430 million. (Experts say the real shortfall probably will be $250 million off what's been projected, but that's still not chicken feed.)

If you step back a little, what becomes clear is that the state is starting to cycle wildly from fiscal surplus to shortfall and then back again. Why? Because politicians are responding to political whims by offering the dessert of tax cuts before partaking of the meal of good budgeting practices.

For all the caterwauling about South Carolinians being taxed too much, the state will take in almost $600 million less in the coming year because of recent tax cuts:

If you add all of the tax cuts, the state won't bring in some $585.9 million in 2008 than it would have if the tax cuts had not occurred. In other words, without the tax cuts, the coming year's budget likely wouldn't face a shortfall of up to $430 million. Instead, it would have a surplus of about $150 million.

Now while all of these numbers are interesting, the practice of incessant tax cuts means something really deeper: Instead of having a surplus next year and being able to improve education, health care, prisons, the environment and a host of programs, state leaders are facing another annual funding crisis.

By cutting in good times, lawmakers create a rhythmic dynamic that they don't have enough in lean times. In turn, that means they'll cut more government services. In the end, government becomes smaller by default, not by design.

But some would argue that it's by design anyway because the long-term purpose of cuts is to serve as tools to starve government - to drown it in a bathtub, as one famous budget-cutting devotee has opined.

In our book, this strategy is wholly disingenuous. If leaders want to cut government, they should cut programs outright and face the music offered by voters. They shouldn't stand by and wait for lean times to cut programs because they don't have money.

So why do they do it this way? First, South Carolina politicians just won't raise taxes when they need money because of the fear of political backlash. And they're scared of another kind of backlash if they cut programs directly - that a disaffected constituent might run against them.

She-crab soup is uniquely Charlestonian-a silky, seafood chowder with a European heritage. The dish helped put Charleston on the regional culinary road map, as surely as Philadelphia's cheese steaks or Chicago's deep-dish pizzas. Shrimp and grits are perhaps the only items appearing more often on the menus of Charleston restaurants than this elegant appetizer.

"There's nothing quite like it on this side of the Atlantic," says John Martin Taylor, cookbook author and the notorious arbiter of Lowcountry cuisine known as "Hoppin' John." Although some Charleston area restaurateurs bemoan it as nothing more than a novelty item slurped by the gallon by gullible tourists, Taylor maintains it's an example of a delightfully distinct regional cuisine being bred into mediocrity by taking shortcuts such as thickening it with flour ("wallpaper paste" he says with disgust).

WEEKLY EXCERPTS

S.C. Statehouse Report has partnered with USC Press to provide readers with an interesting weekly historical excerpt about the state. Each excerpt, which is used with permission and not for republication, is taken from The South Carolina Encyclopedia, a 1,077-page book published in 2006 with entries by almost 600 contributors and edited by noted historian Walter Edgar. We hope you enjoy this new feature.

Food historians believe she-crab soup is based on the Scottish seafood bisque partan bree which was brought by settlers to the New World in the early 1700s where it was localized in Charleston with the addition of boiled and pureed long grain rice and the roe of blue crabs. During a 1909 visit to Charleston, President William Howard Taft supped on she-crab soup at the home of Mayor R. Goodwyn Rhett. It is made with the meat of a dozen female crabs, fish stock, milk, spices, and heavy cream. Finishing touches include a sprinkling of the orange crab eggs across the surface of the thick soup, followed by a dollop of a fine, dry sherry like Amontillado. The soup is a blending of the New and Old worlds, served up hot on a Charleston verandah.

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