Republicans will set the agenda for the year, but not without potential fights
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — Returning to the Statehouse with a supermajority in the House and Senate, Republicans are hopeful to easily pass priorities such as cutting taxes and restoring school choice vouchers, leaders said.
However, questions remain about the details and debates in 2025, which will feature the first supermajority in the Senate since Reconstruction. Republicans in that chamber have not yet set their caucus priorities, said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield.
“We’re in uncharted waters now in South Carolina,” said House Minority Leader Roger Kirby, D-Lake City. “We don’t know what to expect, quite frankly.”
In the House, a top priority for the majority GOP caucus is “historic tax cuts,” which could have widespread support from both House Democrats and the hardline conservative Freedom Caucus.
However, that all depends on the actual plan, which leaders have not yet laid out.
As for school choice, Republicans in both chambers want to reinstate taxpayer-funded aid for private tuition after the state Supreme Court threw out that part of last year’s school choice law as unconstitutional.
But there could be disagreement among Republicans on how to respond to that ruling. And Democrats will likely continue fighting efforts to help parents pay for private K-12 schools — as they have for two decades. However, Democrats won’t be able to sway that debate on their own, as the election reduced their ability to block anything going forward.
And it’s unclear whether legislators will attempt a stricter ban on abortions in 2025. A law that took effect in August 2023 banned abortions past six weeks’ gestation, with limited exceptions.
The House Freedom Caucus, whose ranks are still unclear, will push for a ban from conception, said Rep. Jordan Pace, a Goose Creek Republican who leads the caucus.
But the majority GOP caucus doesn’t want to waste time leading that fight.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022, the South Carolina House has repeatedly passed bills banning abortions from the outset of a pregnancy, which senators blocked. Rather than get into yet another stalemate with the Senate, the House will wait on the Senate to act before taking that up, said House Majority Leader Davey Hiott, R-Pickens.
But he does expect an abortion debate eventually.
“I believe that when it comes to defending being a pro-life state, we are 100% pro-life,” Hiott said. “So, I believe you’re going to see that again.”
How much dissent the majority Republican caucus will receive from the Freedom Caucus is up in the air. The caucus has spent the past two years warring with their Republican colleagues, trying to push them further right.
It’s unclear whether their ranks will include Rep. RJ May, a Lexington County Republican who founded the caucus in 2022 and served as its de facto spokesman. He could be indicted on criminal charges after federal law enforcement seized multiple electronic devices from his home.
Asked by reporters about May’s status with the caucus, Pace said only that May remains a member of the House, so “there’s no reason to exclude him.”
All 13 Freedom Caucus members who ran for re-election kept their seats, and several more either ousted more moderate incumbent Republicans or won open races, Pace pointed out. He hopes that will increase the group’s pull with House Republican leadership, he said.
“By all accounts, I think we’re succeeding,” Pace told reporters at a news conference.
However, he could not give an exact tally of the caucus’ membership. There were 17 members last year; four did not seek re-election.
Despite its small size, the Freedom Caucus made waves through floor debates and procedural motions. The uber-conservative group counted it a major success in running out the clock on several bills, blocking compromises in the closing minutes of the session in May. That included legislation to merge six agencies in an overhaul of the public health system.
House Republican leadership plans to revive that proposal, or at least something similar, this session, Hiott said.
“Obviously, the No. 1 principle of the Republican platform is to consolidate and make government smaller, so I don’t understand why Republicans would be against that, but we’ll see where that leads us,” Hiott said.
School choice
House Republicans plan to rewrite the law creating taxpayer-funded scholarships for K-12 students for private school tuition, in the hopes that the state Supreme Court will this time find it constitutional, said House Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter.
“I think there were some avenues in school choice to which we can put that matter up before the court again,” Smith said.
The high court struck down that component of the Legislature’s 2023 law, which provided $6,000 scholarships for eligible students. The rest of the program remains in place, allowing the quarterly payments to be used for other expenses such as tutoring.
The state Supreme Court gutted the purpose of the law by ruling the private tuition payments violated the state constitution’s ban on public money directly benefiting private education. But the makeup of the court has changed since then, potentially meaning a different outcome for legislators.
Some Democrats in the House might support another proposal, but it’s unlikely they would get behind a rewrite of the same law, Kirby said.
“It still doesn’t change the primary underlying argument that they’re not constitutional,” Kirby said.
As for the Freedom Caucus, it advocated Thursday for a different way to help parents with tuition. Providing tax credits to refund parents is a more legally sound option, Pace said. A similar program limited to students with disabilities has never been challenged.
But the Freedom Caucus would also be fine with an “all-of-the-above approach,” including revisiting the original law, Pace said.
Taxes
One thing that legislators across the political spectrum might agree on is tax reform. That’s the Republican caucus’ No. 1 priority going into the session, Hiott and Smith said.
What that looks like is still up in the air, they said.
“We have all decreed that tax relief is our priority,” Smith said. “I think that there’s a commitment and there’s a will in our body.”
Among states with income taxes, South Carolina has one of the lowest effective tax rates nationally because of the way its taxes are structured, as well as generous exemptions and deductions. Nearly 45% of tax filers in South Carolina pay zero state income tax, while the wealthiest 10% pay 65% of all state income taxes collected, according to the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.
Democrats can get behind tax relief, especially for small businesses, Kirby said.
After all, the Legislature unanimously passed a $1 billion phased-in tax cut in 2022 after Democrats worked with Republicans to ensure the tax breaks covered lower-wage earners. This year’s budget accelerated that process, doubling the scheduled reduction to $200 million.
Support among Democrats in the House will depend on the actual proposal and the numbers behind it, Kirby said. As the state’s population grows, the state has to be able to keep up with more people using taxpayer-funded services, he said.
“The devil’s always in the details, right?” Kirby said.
And the Freedom Caucus wants more cuts, faster. As proponents of significantly reducing government spending, Freedom Caucus members called for House Republicans to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget to further reduce taxes.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau. S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
