Our state legislature is back in session to address the huge budget shortfall that the legislature created by switching the tax structure to be heavily based on sales tax. Our Governor, our House Speaker, and our Senate President describe, in this satire below, their thoughts and beliefs about how to address this crisis.
Harrell: Well, we’ve got ourselves one heck of a crisis.
McConnell: Yes, the federal government’s got us over a barrell, Harrell. We need to think seriously about secession.
Sanford: I call vice president!
Harrell: Hold on a minute — we’re not ready.
McConnell: Hmm. You’re right, Bobby. I haven’t gotten the Hunley retrofitted for active service yet. And I’ve only built one cannon, and I had to pay for it out of my own pocket.
Harrell: Well, what should we do?
McConnell: I’ve got it. We’ll encourage our people to start shooting the illegal immigrants, because they’re the ones who are really costing our state all this money.
Harrell: Now, the Mexicans aren’t really so bad, why I –
McConnell: I’m talking about them Yankees. Any federale or New Englander comes down here, we shoot ‘em, agreed?
Sanford: I’ve got a lot of friends from New York, you know. Wall Street and Howard Rich have been very good to me.
Harrell: We need companies like Michelin and BMW, and we need investment from Detroit and Toyota for the R&D for hydrogen fuel cells.
McConnell: Why you two are nothing but a scalawag and a carpetbagger! I bet you’d like to have another Reconstruction down here, with the Freedman’s Bureau and what all.
Harrell: Let’s get back to the issue: How are we going to cut spending?
Sanford: What we need to do is to rewrite our state constitution. I’d do it myself, but I have to hold press conferences and spend time with my boys. I have four of them, you know.
McConnell: I’ve already got my boys working on the state constitution.
Harrell: What we need up here are some girls. Where are those lobbyists?
McConnell: They’re all visiting the senators. I’ve turned the Senate into a boys club, and I’m trying to get women lobbyists banned. We could turn the women’s restrooms into cigar bars. I’ve got the architectural drawings right here.
Sanford: We’ve got to talk about cutting spending.
McConnell: Are you still here? We always pass bills without you anyway. You only care about your future in politics, and let me let you in on a little secret. You have no future in politics. I see how you are. You only sign bills if you think you won’t get attacked politically for doing so. You wouldn’t even sign my bill to establish a Confederate Sesquicentennial Commission.
Sanford: I didn’t veto it, did I?
McConnell: Well, since you’re here, what do the agency heads recommend?
Sanford: They said that we should outsource every agency’s operations to India.
McConnell: That’s what we did with the Klan.
Sanford: I said India, not Indiana.
McConnell: Oh, yeah, OK. Well, I hate the Klan anyway. I hate the Klan and the NAACP equally. They both hurt my feelings.
Harrell: Do you think the NAACP boycott and the NCAA ban are hurting our economy here in South Carolina? Because, you know, umm, I, umm. I mean, you know I don’t think that it hurts us, but some people say that our flying the Confederate flag might be hurting our economy.
McConnell: I’m not going to sell out my heritage! Do you think that Confederate soldiers ever listened to any other opinion other than that of Jefferson Davis? Never. He’s not here to tell us what to do, so we’ll just have to keep flying the flag until he comes back.
Sanford: I think you’re confusing Jefferson Davis with Jesus.
McConnell: They both deserve holidays, that I know for sure.
Harrell: And we gave a holiday to the blacks, so why don’t they just quit this boycott?
McConnell: We gave them a holiday and a monument. And it’s an important monument. I know because I measured it and, it’s a monument of similar size to the Confederate Soldier Monument. I served as the chairman of the commission, and I made sure that no one could say that the black man’s monument was bigger.
Sanford: They sure want a lot from us, don’t they? Like I said in my op-ed, I try to build symbolic bridges where I can. I mean, “South Carolina and the South as a whole bear a heavier historical burden than the rest of our country” with regards to race. Everyone should keep in mind that, “within many of our own lifetimes, a man who looked like Barack Obama had a difficult time even using the public restrooms in our state.” And that man was Elmer Johnson. Good old Elmer. He’s taking medicine for his problem now, just like Bob Dole.
Harrell: Can we get back on track, please? We’d like to solve this problem before the election. See, Sanford, it’s important to take real action before the election, not afterward. Like, if you’re going to endorse somebody for president, it helps to do so before the citizens of your state vote.
Sanford: I did. I published my op-ed, “Don’t vote for Obama, And By the Way, I’m Not Endorsing Anyone For President Unless They Endorse Me For Vice,” on opposite day. Thus, when I explicitly said, “I won’t be voting for Barack Obama for president,” everybody knew exactly what I wanted them to do: Vote for Barack Obama.
McConnell: I’ve had enough of this. Sanford, go away. If you veto what the legislature says, we’ll just override you as we always do. We can always easily meet the 2/3 requirement.
Harrell: But McConnell, you tell people that the 2/3 requirement is impossible to meet with regards to the Confederate flag legislation.
McConnell: It’s called bluffing, Bobby. Besides, everybody knows that a simple majority can remove the 2/3 requirement. That’s why I’ve been fighting to rewrite our constitution. I want to include an extremely important amendment.
Harrell: The amendment about how raising taxes cannot be done without a 2/3 majority?
McConnell: Well, that amendment would be nice, I guess, but why would we want to tie the legislature’s hands on anything like that? The real amendment I want is about the Confederate flag and about the name South Carolina. I want a 3/5 requirement in our constitution regarding the name of our state and about the placement of the Confederate flag.
Harrell: What do you want to do with our state’s name?
McConnell: You know how Kentucky is known as “The Commonwealth of Kentucky.” Well, I want South Carolina to be known as “The Confederate State of South Carolina.”
Sanford: Let’s get back to the task at hand – fixing this budget crisis we’re in.
McConnell: Fine. Just as long as we don’t raise taxes or fees or use any of our savings. And we should make sure that the cuts are really deep so we don’t have to bother the legislators again.
Harrell: What should we do? Make across the board cuts at state agencies?
Sanford: You should take the time to carefully listen to my proposals for targeted spending cuts. And by the way, you shouldn’t get paid anything while you’re deliberating, not even a per diem.
Harrell: I need my $131 per day. Let’s just make cuts across the board. What do you say, 6%?
McConnell: Better make it 7. But I’m going to make some targeted cuts. Just like you, Sanford, I’ve got a hit list. I’m going to cut the Supreme Court’s budget – they need to learn who really runs this state. Now, get out of here, you two. All this talk about boards makes me want to get back to playing stratego.
3 Comments
December 21, 2008 at 4:33 pm
You’re on track with prudent and rational reasons why the flag should be taken down. I hope our legislators will be prompted to revisit this issue and make taking the flag down a priority. I pray you will not give up or grow weary in the fight to get the flag removed from the South Carolina State Grounds. The Confederate flag is an item from our history whose place is on private display, history books and museums but not for public display on our state grounds.
January 25, 2009 at 7:35 am
As I read this satire over again, the thing that seems the most unlikely to happen in real life is the notion that Gov. Sanford would actually sit down in a room with the leaders in the legislature to discuss anything.
Governor Sanford “leads” and “communicates” only by press releases and press conferences. His failure to interact constructively with our legislators, time and again, causes delay, confusion, uncertainty, and unhappiness.
February 1, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Here’s an example of Gov. Sanford’s stunning lack of leadership: He hasn’t ever sat down with the Employment Security Commission.