With the legislature’s most recent tax-increasing outrage dominating the news from Augusta, it may have escaped the attention of the public that as of yesterday, the 17th, our intrepid legislators are getting paid $100 per day in Special Session pay.
The legislature has been in session since early January, but in the three-and- a-half months since then, the majority Democrats, who control the House and Senate and therefore set the agenda, evidently could not complete the work of making everything they touch worse. So, ever since the statutory adjournment date, which was the 16th, they have been collecting special session pay in addition to the salary, expenses, and benefits they already received for their service thus far this year.
(Special Sessions have costs far and above the extra pay for legislators – estimates are that each Special Session day sets taxpayers back $50,000.)
If they ever do decide to adjourn, we can perhaps only then make an account of what their work, or lack thereof, has cost us. I suspect we’ll find that the $52 million in tax increases that they enacted on Tuesday, (tax day, appropriately enough) is only the start of it. At the very least, though, their work over the past two days has cost each and every one of us $100 per legislator, per day.
Enjoy the weekend!