Nikki Haley Looks Forward to Budget Battle

The Weekly Standard ^ | 12/2/10 | JOHN MCCORMACK

[redk]

When Nikki Haley was 13, she balanced the books for her parents' small business. Now, as governor-elect, she faces a slightly more daunting task: plugging a billion-dollar hole in the state's budget. But Haley says she looks forward to the challenge. "I love the opportunity that brings" to bring about limited government, she said during a meeting in THE WEEKLY STANDARD's offices this afternoon. "I want to go at every agency start at zero and say, 'What do we have to have?'"

Haley has set up a budget task force to report to her in January, but she's already placed a few items on the chopping block. They range from the symbolic--"We will have a bright and very hard-working staff, but we’ll all be answering our own phones; we won’t have a state house photographer, we’ll use students from the university"--to the substantive: "I want to privatize the entire bus system. Half of the Department of Education is mechanics. I want to get rid of that. I want to go into every part of government and say, 'What can the private sector be doing and what does the government not need to be doing?'"

Haley's to-do list also includes a number of business reforms--“workers comp reform, tort reform, making sure we eliminate the corporate income tax”--as well as good government reforms, such as term limits, spending caps, reporting all spending online, and making voting on-the-record permanent law--a cause she championed in the state legislature.

[ari-freedom]

Maybe she could do what the nutty Sanford could not.

[skr]

I pray so.

[goldstategop]

She has a conservative record. If she can get the GOP legislature to play along, SC will be in great shape... We wish her the best.

[Moose4]

It’s going to be bloody. The Republican fat cats in the state legislature were at the forefront of the vicious smears against her in the campaign. The executive branch in SC is historically weak; all the power resides in the General Assembly, and regardless of party, they do NOT like anybody getting between them and their pork trough.

Mark Sanford fought those guys tooth and nail for eight years and made some progress until he handed them what they needed to render him harmless (his dalliance in Argentina). Haley will get the same treatment, if not worse because she’s young, a woman, and “one ‘em furriners” (even though she’s native-born). Pray for her, because she’s going to need all the help she can get. I think she can do it, though.

}:-)4