Rep. Wismer: Cutting Won't Solve Crisis

Air Date:01/20/2011

By Kealey Bultena

State Representative Susan Wismer says South Dakotans shouldn’t be surprised by Governor Dennis Daugaard’s budget proposal. She says voters sent politicians to Pierre this November to cut programs.

"When people run for office, they say 'I want to cut taxes,' but they don’t give the details. I feel like they mislead people down the road of saying we can fix this all by just finding government waste. I think most legislators and I really even think Governor Daugaard knows that’s not our major problem. We’re going through all this agony for the sake of having bragging rights to the lowest per capita tax rate in the country. We put $178 million less into K-12 education in South Dakota than we do in North Dakota, and North Dakota’s population is twenty percent lower than ours is," Wismer says.

The Democrat is on the Appropriations committee. She says lawmakers who want to fix finances by slashing unnecessary spending won’t find enough waste to balance the budget.

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