Surviving on $136 per day

The governor and all these state lawmakers are throwing around fighting words over the excess spending in Columbia — pointing fingers, casting blame and stoking the fires of class warfare.

And that's just about their per diems. Imagine what it'll be like when they start whacking the tar out of the budget next week.

The General Assembly will reconvene Monday to face the unpleasant task of cutting about $500 million out of South Carolina's $7 billion state budget.

They had better work fast. For every week they work, it's going to cost us $40,263.

That's about a teacher or a prison guard a week, and South Carolina can't really afford to lose either at this point.

Gov. Mark Sanford has suggested that lawmakers forgo their subsistence pay to handle this crisis, suggesting that they are the ones who caused this mess in the first place by spending like drunken sailors.

You have to give it to the governor, he has a natural ability to hack certain people off, particularly state lawmakers.

Legislators will tell you that, yes, spending got out of control, but note that the governor's budget proposal for this fiscal year was actually slightly higher than the one eventually passed by the General Assembly.

But it doesn't matter. For nearly six years now, the Legislature has played Coyote to Sanford's Roadrunner. Nothing seems to stick to him, and everything sticks to them.

Lawmakers also will tell you that they aren't getting extra pay for this session because, through procedural maneuvering, next week actually counts as part of the session from earlier this year.

The only money some members will claim is mileage for the trip to Columbia and subsistence pay, which is $136 a day for food and lodging.

The mileage and subsistence rates are set by the IRS, not the General Assembly.

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell was not at all pleased with Sanford's suggestion. He said that not all elected officials are "rich people" and are not "independently wealthy enough to reach into their pockets" and pay for this little overtime session.

"I am not going to ask them to." McConnell said Sanford "is sitting over there in a taxpayer-paid mansion with staff and with paid chauffeurs and drawing a salary many, many times what they are getting.

"A lot of the people (lawmakers) are from working families, and have children in college."

Legislators get $10,400 a year for their part-time gig, which puts them squarely among the lowest-paid state lawmakers in the country. Most all of them, except for the few retirees in the bunch, have real jobs.

For much of the fall, as revenue projections dropped quicker than Tommy Bowden's stock, Sanford urged lawmakers to return and fix the budget.

He threatened to bring them back, but wanted them to do it on their own.

Here's the funny thing: If Sanford had called lawmakers back, they would have been eligible for extra pay, $260 per member, per day. That's another $44,200 a week.

If they don't fix this mess, and cut $500 million, before the end of the month, that's how much the price of governing goes up.

The Legislature's resolution that allowed them to come back expires Oct. 31. If they don't get this budget fixed by then, the only way they can reconvene is for Sanford to call an emergency session.

Now, a lot of these lawmakers would not take that additional pay, and some of them say they won't request subsistence pay.

And the truth is, in comparison with the truckloads of money they are dealing with, $40,000 is not much.

They are in a tough spot. If they take the money they give their opponents in the upcoming election something new to crow about.

And they give Sanford another chance to take a shot at them. Like he needs it.

The bottom line is that this is just the cost of doing business. But it's good politics to beat up on the lawmakers, paint them as fat cats holed up at swanky hotels — even when the reality is more like the Comfort Inn down the street.

If everyone watched pennies this closely on the entire budget, the state might not have gotten into this fix in the first place.

Reach Brian Hicks at 937-5561 or bhicks@postandcourier.com.