Gov. Sanford Issues Statement on BEA Estimates

Statement

Gov. Sanford Issues Statement on BEA Estimates

Governor Mark Sanford issued the following statement on the state Board of Economic Advisors' decision to cut this year's estimate for state revenue by an additional two percent:

"Today's news is unfortunate but not unexpected, and frankly we believe we're a long way from the end of the road on these budget cuts," Gov. Sanford said. "It bears repeating that the situation we're in was predictable, preventable and guaranteed based on the run-up in spending over the past four years, and the size and duration of these cuts will now be intensified and prolonged because of the scale of what's happening in global credit markets.

"We believe the legislature's recent budget cuts were largely a step in the right direction, but with more to cut from the budget it's important they improve in some key areas. First among them is making improvements to our very costly form of government via restructuring. We also need to commit to the idea of not growing government faster than the economy so that we can avoid these situations in the future. As well, we can't borrow from Peter to pay Paul through the process of annualizations because they ultimately make budget holes worse. Lastly, we have to continue prioritizing and taking care of first things first, which I'd commend the legislature for largely doing in the last round of cuts.

"We'll be consulting legislative leaders on in the coming days on how to most expeditiously deal with these cuts this year."

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