♪ Welcome to "This Week In South Carolina."

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week we're talking about Senate Democratic priorities in the state Senate and in the House.

And to do that, I'm joined with Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto of Orangeburg and House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford of Columbia.

Welcome to you both.

<Glad to be here> So, Senator, I want to kick it off with you and talk about what we're seeing in the House and in the Senate.

We already heard from Republicans in January and several shows about their priorities.

What are Senate Democrats focused on this session?

Well, we care about, the average guys ability to afford living right now.

I mean, affordability, we hear it on the national level, but it's true here as well.

Every year I come to Columbia, I will tell you that I can't find a better reason to come than education.

I mean, it all starts in the classroom, and we want to make sure that we have the highest quality, well-paid public school teachers we can have for our students.

So I hope that this year, we'll focus on education and continue to put the spotlight on that, particularly education in rural areas.

Health care is a concern.

When I grew up in South Carolina, back in the 60s and 70s, as a young person, every town had a doctor, every county had a hospital.

That's not true now.

People are having to drive miles and miles to get health care.

And so we're adding, telehealth, more robustly.

We're trying to expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners, physicians, assistants, and in the economic development, making sure that we're recruiting high quality jobs, to, particularly to rural areas.

Gavin Jackson> And it seems like some of those things are moving in the right direction, too.

When you look at, you know, removing the certificate of need restriction, do you think that's help improve health care access?

And what we're seeing with some of these bigger groups?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> Well, it's not going to be long before they're probably like four hospital systems in South Carolina.

The way things are going.

But as long as we have, the rural hospitals out there, I know some of them are now run by PRISMA, and some of them are now run by M.U.S.C.

That doesn't concern me so much is that they stay open.

I, in the counties I represent, Bamberg no longer has a hospital.

Barnwell no longer has hospital, but they do have a 24 hour emergency room.

And so in things like, stroke, car accidents, snake bites, time is of the essence.

You can't live 60 miles away from the nearest hospital.

And so we want to make sure that access is available.

Gavin Jackson> Which then goes into the affordability issue, too.

If you want to live somewhere like that versus the access to the services.

And we'll talk about more about affordability in a moment.

But, Representative Rutherford, tell me about what you want to see in the House with the Democrats and what y'all are trying to do.

I know that y'all are both minority parties here, but what can you get done so far this session?

Well, it's very similar.

We are focused like a laser beam on affordability.

The Republicans have truly ignored it.

They believe that only the rich need to survive in South Carolina and they are emblematic of that in their legislation.

That's all we've been talking about so far is abortion.

Then we moved on to hemp derived drinks.

Now we're gonna probably talk about something else stupid, because that seems to be the agenda in South Carolina.

Every January, all we do is talk about abortion.

We need to focus on those things that ordinary South Carolinians are dealing with, like their ability to afford food, ability to afford medicine, and their desire to get a job that pays more than the one that they have now.

And that's what Democrats are focused.

Gavin Jackson> And Todd, when you talk about that, can you can you tell me how you work with Republicans?

I mean, I know there's differences on policy and other issues, but when it comes to affordability, that should be something that crosses both the aisles.

Can you get anything done when it comes to that?

Can you work with them to try and fix some of this?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> It is a continuing battle to make sure that Republicans also see the little people, and especially when you're dealing with the national Republican agenda, which seems to be gone totally awry, but dealing with local Republicans, it's something that we do on a regular basis, making sure that the little people's voices are heard.

Things like Brad just talked about keeping hospitals open, making sure that people have access to healthcare, making sure that people have access to the things they need on a regular basis, like childcare.

Childcare is a huge issue in South Carolina, and it's, "Well, we need people to go to work."

Well they can't go to work if there's nobody to take care of their child.

And it's something that I have a four year old, something I have to deal with on a regular basis as well.

And so we do work with Republicans.

We are making sure that they focus on the things that they need to stay focused on, like affordability, continuation of care for people that are getting older and getting a better job.

Gavin Jackson> And Senator Hutto, pick up on that.

Sen.

Brad Hutto> So childcare is not just an affordability issue.

It's for businesses to recruit workers.

They've got to have somewhere, you know, for their employees to have the children while the mothers are working.

And I say mothers because usually it is the mothers who end up staying home if they can't find, high quality daycare.

We, have a shortage in South Carolina, not only of teachers, but health care workers and daycare workers.

And so we've got to make sure that we, if we're going to continue to grow the economy, and we got Scout Motors coming here, 4000 jobs, we're now going to have to have 4000 jobs.

If we don't have daycare for some of the workers that are going to get jobs in that factory.

Gavin Jackson> So do you see something?

I think we've talked about this before, but in terms of maybe incentives for some of these economic development projects, should we be seeing them incorporating childcare or other affordability issues into these developments so they can get maybe more incentives or tax breaks or how do you how do you see that?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> I do think that.

I talked to several of the big businesses.

One thing they will tell you is their model is not to run a daycare themselves, but they are not opposed to having a daycare on campus of the facility, okay.

They just want a third party to run that.

And so we tried incentivizing the manufacturers by giving them a tax incentives.

That's the wrong way to approach it.

I think we've got to give the daycare centers a tax incentive to move on to the campus of the manufacturers.

Gavin Jackson> And then Senator, just to pick up what we're talking about in terms of legislating, you have gone to a super minority in the House, in the Senate, Sorry.

How do you guys work?

I mean, I know you've gotten some bipartisan bills passed when it comes to protecting children in the past.

And also, we can talk about DUI in a moment.

But, how do you see affecting, the Republican super majority in the Senate when it comes to getting some legislation passed?

Is it a matter of finding common ground on some of these issues?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> So we try and find common ground where we can, with either group, to forge a majority Rep.

Todd Rutherford> We just looking for common ground.

And a lot of the bills that actually come through the House, you'll see the Democrats and the mainstream Republicans voting on the same side.

The Freedom Caucus tends to be the fly in the ointment, not understanding the process and simply wanting to tear of stuff down, not voting with us.

But for the most part, the bills that come through the House pass with a large majority and as both parties working together, get it done.

Gavin Jackson> And Representative Rutherford to that effect, we talked about hemp derived consumables last week.

It was a knock down, drag out kind of implode on its own.

Those Republican led bill by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Weston Newton.

It was also a caucus priority.

You saw a similar bill passed last year with broad bipartisan support, which was kind of loosely regulating these drinks, these these gummies that people have been eating and consuming because of the 2018, farm bill.

So what happened, in your opinion, to that bill last week when it came to further restricting these consumables and do you think that's ever going to go anywhere at this point?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> The bill that passed last year simply raise the age to 21, which I was very much in support of, and so was everybody in the House.

Make sure that people have to be 21 before they buy these and consume them.

The bill this year was going to ban most of the industry.

And according to the data that I heard, was going to put out of business 73 farmers, total economic impact, 1.5 billion dollar lost to South Carolina.

And it needed to be stopped.

I don't think that they had done the the research they needed to before they brought it to the forefront.

Representative Ford, who's a freshman, he came forward and talked about his son and his son needing these gummies because his son needed the gummies to deal with the condition that he has, he went and did all this research became almost I think he's a hemp grower, but just to understand it, to make sure that his son had access to it and we were going to pass this bill and deny his son access to that.

That is what stopped the bill.

The bill went back to judiciary.

They're going to do some more research, and hopefully they'll research will lead them to believe that what we passed already is enough.

That bill is in the Senate.

So hopefully they'll take that up and get that across the desk.

Gavin Jackson> I mean, do you think it's just kind of, it's a weird space, right.

I mean, you really see something go back to committee.

Do you think it's going to be just maybe more incumbent upon the Senate to take this up?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> It's a longer conversation about how it's back to when I first got here in 1998 that we did bills and they didn't all pass, and some of them went down and bills and votes were close.

You rarely see that.

And we talked about that earlier.

This was one of those that harkened back to that.

We had to look at the board, count the number of votes.

But truly, Democrats and Republicans and Freedom Caucus working together to make sure that the government didn't overreach, which is what I think they were trying to do, Gavin Jackson> To say to that effect, I mean, SLED Chief Mark Keel has been an outspoken critic of anything when it comes to marijuana or even hemp drug consumers.

Do you think you see too much influence from him on this?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> I do, I think, I think I think SLED Chief Mark Keel ought to stay in his lane and enforce the laws that we pass, not try and pass them himself.

He is free to run for the House or the Senate if he chooses to.

But what he needs to do is enforce the laws, not tell us what we should be doing to ensure that the public is safe.

We can do that.

That's what we're elected to do.

He needs to stay in his lane Gavin Jackson> And talk about lanes, talk about public safety.

Senator, we're talking about the DUI bill that took about three weeks to get through the Senate.

There's been some discussion about whether it really does that much.

But tell me about S-52 and what the Senate ended up passing when it comes to strengthening DUI laws in the state.

Or maybe, maybe I'm using strengthening too much here.

Sen.

Brad Hutto> Well, it has many different aspects to it, but, it does increase penalties.

I'm not convinced that that's necessarily how we, address the problem.

I think expanding the ignition interlocks, devices on cars so that if you get a DUI, or even if you get pulled for a DUI, you have to put one of those devices on your car for a period of time.

We've had that, interlock, system in place for several years, and the number of deaths have gone down.

So I think it's starting to work.

It'll probably work more if more people are required to put those on.

Just taking away people's license, guess what?

They're just going to drive without a license.

I mean, it's not like we have, in my county, in Orangeburg, I think we maybe have two Uber drivers.

I mean, you know, we don't have a public transportation system.

So when you're in a rural area, you have to drive to get where you're going.

And, I want people to drive legally.

I want them to drive with licenses.

But if the idea is we're just going to take take away everybody's license and that's going to stop it.

I don't believe that works.

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> And Senator Hutto already talked about the areas that he represents and the loss of hospitals.

So when people get in an accident, they don't have immediate access to care.

That's one of the things that raises our death rate.

It is not necessarily DUI is the way that everybody would have you believe.

Toughening DUI penalties is something that we've been doing since I got here again in 1998, and if it is not worked, it is because the toughening the penalty is not going to fix anything.

We need other ideas and interlock is a great idea.

Figuring out how people can tell whether they should be driving or not.

Most of the people that get arrested for DUI, charged a DUI, and even a lot that are convicted of DUI had no idea that they were going to blow above the limit.

And that's what we've got to make sure that we stop those people from ever driving if they're drunk.

Gavin Jackson> It's an outreach campaign?

Is it just I mean, how do you fix this?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> It's innovation, it's technology.

It's using an interlock.

It's those people that are voluntarily putting an interlock on their cars so that they know that they should not be driving.

A lot of the people that you talk to will tell you judges included prosecutors included, that they don't like DUI, because if people didn't, they did not intend to be a criminal.

And so how can we make this person that doesn't intend to be a criminal, that wants to do the right thing, understand that once they've had a glass of wine and that shot, that that's too much, a beer and a shot is too much, two glasses of wine is probably too much.

And again, I'm also a criminal defense lawyer.

I've been doing this for a long time.

I don't know exactly how much alcohol you could drink before your DUI, but what I do know is that once you consume that alcohol, allowing you to make that decision always causes problems.

Gavin Jackson> But Todd you would agree that you do need to strengthen those penalties for repeat offenders.

I mean, I know again, you can't legislate so much and people can still in a driving.

But I mean it's, it's something to do that.

Right?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> It is something to do, but it has not as of yet in all my years done anything.

We have increased those penalties.

I can't tell you what they are.

Most lawyers can't tell you what they are.

Most police officers can't tell you what they are.

So what we know is simply increasing penalties is not going to fix a single thing.

We've got to make sure that those people, once they've been convicted, have an interlock device on their car.

That they know, I've talked about putting, DUI DataMaster machines down in Five Points, in The Vista so that people can blow into it and see they should not be driving.

Until we're willing to do more innovative things.

We're going to continue to have the same problems.

Gavin Jackson> I want to pick up, with another debate that we saw in the House.

We had a couple debates.

Well, there's just one going on in the Senate as it kind of goes, but something to that effect.

We were talking about, restricting access to abortion inducing medications, like Mifepristone and making that a schedule for controlled substance.

There was a lot of back and forth on this.

We've seen this happen in other states, too.

A lot of the bills that we talk about as well have also been under judicial review in other states, too, which I know doesn't preclude us from actually doing things here.

But what was the debate over that bill?

And do you think that's going to do anything?

And we were talking about abortion being a continuous issue here.

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> It's again, one of those things that we've been arguing about every single January.

It comes up, and I think that the Republicans simply want to get to the point where they are clear that a woman cannot decide what she wants to do with her own body, period.

Where they believe that a woman does not have sound mind to make decisions regarding her body.

The problem with these two drugs is that they also deal with things other than abortion.

And so trying to thread that needle to make sure that people have access to medication that can help them while stopping, while the Republicans want to stop them from having access to something, that helps with abortions, that was a difficult needle to thread.

I doubt we did it right.

But I know that they don't care.

They don't believe that a woman should be able to make those choices.

They want to stop anything having to do with abortions and women's health care, and this was just another method to do that.

And Senator Hutto, that bill now is in the Senate.

It's going to go through the committee process there.

But we've also seen it in the subcommittee process and the offseason as well as during part of January, that we have not seen much traction on these restrictive abortion measures that some far right Republicans are pushing.

Do you think that, that is maybe we've reached a point in this state where it comes to folks realizing the writing on the wall in terms of six weeks, the current ban that we have on the books right now is enough that people don't have an appetite for more.

I will tell you that polling shows that the people of South Carolina certainly believe that.

And yes, they're always going to be people who push and push, and they're going to, until we outlaw it completely.

They're never going to be satisfied unless you are wealthy enough to be able to drive to New York.

You know.

But, what we've got to focus on is we cannot continue to criminalize the practice of medicine.

We cannot continue to restrict a woman's access to care.

What it really is now, with the six week ban, is really now about the ability for women to have the right to good quality health care in that area.

We got plenty of counties in South Carolina that don't even have OBGYNs.

We should be focusing on that rather than restricting these medications.

Gavin Jackson> Do you see that being a bill that goes?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> Well, you know, we did take up an abortion bill, in committee hearings in the Senate and the, off session.

And it didn't even get out of subcommittee.

So I don't know that that'll have a lot of traction.

Senator Hutto mentioned polling and that's one of the things that I think we've gotten away from is doing what the people of South Carolina send us down here to do.

If we listen to polling, we'd have medical marijuana.

If we listen to polling, we would at least have gambling on your phones because people are doing it anyway.

People are marching to the beat of their own drum more than they ever have.

They're in their own silos.

They're gambling on their phones.

They are using gummies because they think that's the closest thing to medical marijuana.

We have to, as a state, make sure that we're responsive to the people and not dictating from above what the people are going to do.

Gavin Jackson> But, Representative to that effect, I mean, are you worried about gambling, I mean, to see how that works and how that affects people?

I mean, it's always a difficult thing to talk about, especially when you're talking about a full blown casino or actually just on your phone in terms of people maybe not even have enough money to afford the basic things, should they actually be spending money on gaming?

Not that we should tell people what to do essentially, but, Rep.

Todd Rutherford> And that's the crux of it.

It is not our job to tell people what to do.

They right now can gamble on their phones.

They right now can go into the predictive markets if they want to and do all sorts of predicting.

They can bet in the stock market.

People do what they want to do in this day and age more than they ever have.

The problem is that the government has to recognize that, legalize those choices and allow people to have freedom.

And in South Carolina, we were restricting people's freedom.

The Republicans are restricting people's freedoms more than they ever have.

And we have five minutes left.

I thought we had ten, but we got five minutes left.

But we're good at this talking game.

But Todd I want to pick up back again about some issues in terms of what we saw in debate.

Again, another big issue that happened on the House floor was dealing with bathrooms.

This bill that moved through that's now in the Senate would codify what's already on the budget proviso, that would restrict who can use what bathroom in public school, college or university and their facilities to people that they cannot use the bathroom that was assigned, that corresponds to their sex assigned at birth.

So, you had a lot of issues with this, especially for folks that have had gender reassignment surgery.

This bill has also been under review.

The, you know, Fourth Circuit and other circuits across the state, across the country.

So what's the issue with that?

And do you think that this is actually going to solve anything when it gets enforced?

If it gets passed.

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> I can't solve anything because it was never really a problem.

It was a problem that they created so that they could have a solution and try and embarrass Democrats along the way.

I've never had encountered a problem where I went to a bathroom and was wondering what was going on in there.

You go into a bathroom, you close the stall door, and you do what you have to do, and then you leave.

I understanding that there was one issue out of Rock Hill where somebody's child was in a bathroom with somebody that was initially born a man and was in the women's restroom.

But again, I don't know that that child couldn't just go in the stall and shut the door and fix that issue.

What I do know is that someone that was, and this came up during the debate, a 6-2 person that looks like a man with a full beard should not be going into the woman's bathroom at the Colonial Life Arena because they were born a woman.

I think that would scare the bejesus out of everybody in there if that happened.

And if they carry their birth certificate, then it's perfectly legal.

Again, it was not a problem.

It was a problem that they created so that they could then solve it and act like this is going on all over South Carolina, when most people have never experienced.

Gavin Jackson> And again, the enforceability of this is also kinda questionable Rep.

Todd Rutherford> The enforceability, and we talked about what would essentially be the penis police as to whether they're going to go out and search your birth certificate and make you drop your pants to see what it is that you have in your pants, it's ridiculous.

It's a problem that they created so that they could have fun at somebody else's expense.

Sen.

Brad Hutto> But, you know, I go across my district and nobody comes up to me and talks about that.

They want to know about the affordability of daycare.

They want to know about the price of groceries.

They want to know when we're going to get some more jobs or housing in my area.

What about the quality of the schools that my children attend?

Those are the things that people want us to focus on.

These made-up issues are just issues to kind of create gotcha votes within their own primary and have nothing to do with the reality of the lives of people living in South Carolina.

Gavin Jackson> And talk about affordability, you proposed a pretty all encompassing piece of legislation earlier this session with some of your colleagues.

Can you tell us about that, what you hope to accomplish and where that might go this session?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> We want to make sure that there is, a refundable tax credit for those on the lower end of the earning.

Scale, so that they can use that money for daycare.

We want to make sure that we remove the taxes on diapers and other essential things that people have to buy all the time.

I mean, we've got tremendous tax breaks for people who can afford a lobbyist.

Well, what about the mom who just wants us to deal with diapers and daycare?

They they deserve to have our attention, too.

Gavin Jackson> Why is it so hard to pass those exemptions for just diapers?

I mean, that affects everybody.

Sen.

Brad Hutto> You know, I'm hoping we're going to do it.

Okay.

I think we're going to get close this year to to removing the taxes on some of the essentials that, all mothers and young families, have to buy every week.

But as I say, they don't have big lobbyists that come in and lobby and lobby and lobby for us to remove, you know, millions of dollars of taxes on different things, that they can afford to push through.

Gavin Jackson> And we're going to see a tax debate in the Senate.

The House, passed a tax bill last year.

We're also talking about property taxes.

Do you see those actually moving through?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> I do think a property tax bill is going to move through the Senate, which will, keep the homestead exemption probably at age 65, but move the level of the exemption from a 50,000 dollar home to a 150,000 dollar home.

We're going to probably continue to reduce, the income tax rate in this state.

We've got it under six.

Now we're going to go closer to five.

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> Property tax, property tax, property tax.

You know, we have continued to talk about the income tax.

But I've never heard anybody complain about income tax.

When I hear them talk about is their property taxes are too high, especially in Richland County.

We have so much untaxed property that our property tax bills are through the roof and really feeling no way of of getting out of that.

And so we've got to focus on property taxes.

The homestead exemption will be a great way to do it.

Also have a bill that we'll talk about the marriage penalty.

Two single people can both own a house and 4 percent, but once they get married, they can only get one house and that house gets 4 percent.

So, someone is trying to get out of a marriage, can't buy a house and get 4 percent.

They'd have to pay the high 6 percent.

It's not just the 2 percent, it's the millage which goes which goes up as well and makes it a disincentive, it disincentivize is buying property in South Carolina.

Gavin Jackson> Representative, to that effect, Can we piecemeal these things, when we talk about these tax issues or do you have to do an all encompassing property tax bill?

How do you... Rep.

Todd Rutherford> We talked about boat taxes last year, we talked, we don't talk about, homestead exemption this year.

You have to piecemeal to make sure you're not doing too much at one time.

But income tax is just not what I hear.

Anybody talking about.

Sen.

Brad Hutto> Comprehensive tax reform sounds good.

It's too complicated.

It really is.

You've got to take one, boats, cars, millage, property, income.

You got to do them separately.

Gavin Jackson> And what we talk about, just like we said was tort reform, which we're not going to get into in no time.

[laughs] But, Senator, I want to ask you about hate crimes.

Everyone always asks about hate crimes.

It's really not moving at all anymore.

But we're talking about dealing with very small issues, like you were just talking about in terms of affecting one or a few people when it comes to bathrooms of hate crimes, we see is consistent.

I mean, of course, when we saw Mother Emanuel more than ten years ago, other things have popped up here and there, I'm sure, Todd, you could talk about different cases you've seen, but, why do you think there's never going to not, never.

But why do you think we haven't seen any movement on that bill specifically, especially when you look at how essentially watered down it is?

Sen.

Brad Hutto> Well, I mean, the answer is pretty clear.

It's, Republican leadership in the Senate.

They won't bring it up for a vote.

If they brought it up for a vote, it would pass.

But they're dead set against it.

Although they will introduce bills to, say, to increase the penalty if you kill a police horse or a police dog, but not if you, you know, in based on hate kill somebody.

Gavin Jackson> It's just an enhancement.

And everyone says they legislate things out of existence, But I mean, we, Rep.

Todd Rutherford> You can certainly penalize them, which is what the government should be doing.

And the Republican leadership in the House did pass it.

We passed it several times.

It's gone to the Senate and died.

And Shane Massey said that it is not going to come up even though this guy in Richmond County drives out of his neighborhood, sees a Black guy and shoots at him and says he did it only because he was Black.

Got incidents in Myrtle Beach.

We had incidents in Charleston, Richland County.

It's something that we need to tackle.

Gavin Jackson> But do you think it's enough for the feds to take care of it?

Obviously, they have that purview.

But I mean, do you think there should be more?

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> Federal standard is very high.

Both of us are lawyers and practice in federal court.

The federal standard is very high.

We need to make sure that South Carolina sends a message that hate will not be tolerated, especially when you're committing a crime against another person.

Sen.

Brad Hutto> And most all of the crimes in South Carolina are prosecuted at the local level, not in the federal level.

Gavin Jackson> We have three minutes left and, Senator, I want to ask you just about, measles.

We saw we've had about 920 cases of the measles so far this Tuesday.

It's all pretty much in the upstate and Spartanburg County.

But we've had about 600 cases in January alone, so really exploded since last summer.

We've also heard from Doctor Mehmet Oz, who's over the centers for Medicare Medicaid Services at the federal level, talking about people getting the vaccine.

We've heard conflicting stuff come from the administration... Sen.

Brad Hutto> It's not conflicting.

Vaccines work.

The measles vaccine is very effective.

You know, we're about to to lose herd immunity, if we keep going in the direction we're going.

The, American Academy of Pediatrics has a schedule for children getting certain vaccinations at certain ages.

It's been effective.

I had one mom says, "Well, I don't know why I've get polio vaccine.

I never even met anybody with polio."

Duh.

That's because everybody got the vaccine.

[laughs] Okay?

It's the same thing with measles.

And, parental choice is one thing, but children's health is another.

And when we have this many children in South Carolina contracting measles, I don't think people realize how dangerous it is.

I think it's just saying, oh, we'll get measles, get over it.

People die with measles.

People get hospitalized with measles.

It's, you know, there's one thing, you know, South Carolina doesn't want to be on the national news for, but yet every morning when we turn on the national news, it's the measles outbreak in South Carolina.

Gavin Jackson> And Todd we're looking at the election this year, obviously the Senate, it's not up, but the House members are.

Do you think there's any room to pick up some seats?

And it'd be a far stretch.

Rep.

Todd Rutherford> I think if Republicans keep going and ignoring the plight of of people in South Carolina, yes, they're going to lose seats and they should.

And are you concerned about a potential federal overreach coming to the state, which we've seen in Minneapolis?

We see in Charlotte?

I mean, but that's just the ice overreach.

There's overreach every single day by the federal government.

And they are intruding into our lives.

And there are surveilling us in ways that people have no idea.

We need to make sure that we keep to South Carolina principles and stop federal government overreach, stop them from looking at taking our guns away, from making it so the Second Amendment doesn't exist anymore.

So yes, every day we need to make sure that they don't do too much.

I mean, they have tried to get our voter rolls here.

And right now that has stalled and, because they're trying to, as the president says, nationalize the election process.

The election process has always been local, always run at the precinct level, the county level, the state level.

And that's where you register at the state level.

It should be managed by the state.

And the federal government has some role in oversight.

But they do not, they're not entitled our voter lists.

And they're, you know, why do they want it?

They won't even tell us why they want it.

And it seems like everyone's kind of keeping their head down right now and hoping that no one looks at South Carolina.

But do you fear or do you hear from other Republicans that maybe they they could come calling or this could escalate to a situation?

I think we have that, cape around this called Henry McMaster, in his relationship with Donald Trump.

I don't think he will target South Carolina.

I don't think so.

I reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday, they talked about businesses in Texas, concrete business, construction, and they are hurting, filing for bankruptcy because they have no labor.

We talked about labor when it relates to child care in hospitals, restaurants have the same problem.

We need to make sure that the Donald Trump principles stay somewhere else, not here in South Carolina And that's true for our farming community in South Carolina, too.

They rely on these H1, N1 visas for farm workers.

And we got to make sure if we're going to continue to harvest the crops, particularly, you know, the tomatoes and cucumbers and squash and those types of vegetables that require, can't be done with machines but need hand labor.

Our farmers need work.

Well the tariffs will kill all the farmers anyway.

They've already destroyed them.

Not Argentinian farmers, but South Carolina farmers.

We were talking to Senator Brad Hutto and House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford.

Thank you guys so much.

And thank you for watching.

for South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.