Senate Continues to Stall Roads Bill
Columbia , S.C. (WOLO) — On Wednesday, the filibuster on the bill to fix crumbling roads in South Carolina continued inside the Senate chamber.
Several lawmakers are stalling the bill because of the 12 cents gas tax included in the bill, citing the state has new recurring money to fund fixing the states roads and bridges.
“We take what we have already and address our needs,” said Senator Tom Davis. “You don’t go back to the taxpayer and say well, we’ve got 15 percent more money to spend this year than we did last year but we’re still going to raise your gas tax by 75 percent.”
However, other senators are eager to get the bill moving and tried to halt the filibuster by invoking Senate rule to stick to the context of the amendment during the filibuster.
Senator Davis, who is against the gas tax, said the continued failure to reach a debate on the roads bill is about more than stipulations in the amendment but instead a battle of power.
“It’s very, very difficult to take power out of the hands of the few people that have it, they’ve resisted every turn and every time we put a bill forward that will take the power out of their hands and put it in the peoples hand we get a push back and we always end up settling for a quarter of a loaf,” explained Senator Davis. “At this particular point in time, we are not going to give in.”
Meanwhile Governor Nikki Haley is calling on the Senate to take action.
“We have horse trading for roads in the Senate going on right now,” said Governor Haley, “We can’t continue to have good roads just because our President of the Senate, we have to have good roads for all of the Senate and lift every county up and what we’re seeing right now is they don’t want to give up control.”
As of late Wednesday, the Senate did not reach any votes on the roads bill.
