With just two weeks left in this year’s legislative session, the finish line is in sight—and we’re not letting up. After a furlough break last week, we returned to the State House focused and ready to get to work. This week, much of the progress happened in committee as we advanced legislation tied directly to our conservative priorities. From protecting religious freedom in our schools to defending First Amendment rights and ensuring fairness in high school athletics, the House Republican Caucus is putting our Pillars of Progress into action. We’re not just talking about conservative values—we’re delivering real results for South Carolina families, students, and communities.

In today’s world, exercising your right to speak up can come with a cost—especially when powerful interests use frivolous lawsuits to intimidate citizens and silence opinions. That’s why I support the SC Public Expression Protection Act (H.3305), a bill that shields individuals from legal harassment for speaking out on matters of public concern. Whether you’re speaking at a public hearing, writing an op-ed, or posting online about government actions, this bill ensures you can’t be dragged into court simply for using your voice. It’s a win for free speech, and it’s one step closer to becoming law after receiving a favorable report from the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.

Our children should never have to hide their faith at school—and this bill makes sure they won’t have to. The updated Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act (H.3758), reported favorably with an amendment by the House Education & Public Works Committee this week, ensures students can voluntarily express their religious beliefs in classwork, school speeches, and events, just like any other viewpoint. I support this bill because it protects constitutional rights while ensuring school districts remain neutral—not hostile—toward religious expression. This is about fairness, clarity, and freedom of belief.

Students in home schools, charter schools, and Governor’s Schools deserve equal access to extracurriculars, career training, and interscholastic competitions. H.3802, the Participation in Interscholastic Activities bill makes that possible—ensuring that every student gets the chance to grow, compete, and participate. The bill was reported favorably with an amendment out of the House Ed & PW K-12 Subcommittee this week. As a co-sponsor of this bill and someone who believes in educational opportunity for all, I will be proud to vote for this legislation once it makes it to the House floor.

As most of you probably realize by now, the House introduced a flat tax bill earlier in the Session year in order to lower our marginal rate from 6.2% where it was last year to 3.99%. Currently, some South Carolinians are in a 0% tax rate, and some are in the 3% tax rate for their taxable income. In my opinion, despite months of discussions with experts such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and others, not enough work was done to ensure that the impact to lower to middle income citizens would be minimal. Since that announcement, a tremendous backlash has occurred regarding this effort due to the fact that nearly 60% of taxpayers would see a hike in their taxes, and most of those whose taxes would go down are in the highest bracket and therefore the highest income earners. As the House Member with likely the most experience in finances and budgeting, despite not being on the Ways & Means Committee I have spent many hours working on this problem because I believe moving to a lower top bracket and to a flat tax is the right direction for South Carolina; however, I do not think increasing taxes on our working families in the lower to middle income ranges is the right way to go about this. Consequently, several weeks ago after considering the proposal in general terms, I sent Chairman Bannister of Ways and Means an email outlining an idea for a better path forward. 

The biggest cause of lower to middle income individuals and families paying more in taxes is the proposal to shift from using Federal taxable income to Federal adjusted gross income. What does that mean? In order to stop having South Carolina be at the mercy of Congressional politics for various write-offs, moving away from Federal taxable income is a good idea. But lowering the standard deduction to $6000 instead of $14,600 is a big mistake, because therein lies the majority of the pain for our citizens who are currently in the lower two tax brackets to transition to 3.99%. For most of these taxpayers, they are not likely itemizing their annual expenses, but are instead using the Federal standard deduction, which is currently $14,600. I suggested in that email that if we keep the Federal standard deduction at $14,600 for individuals and $29,200 for married couples for everyone in the lower tax brackets, it minimizes the impact such that many taxpayers would see no increase, and those at the higher range of the 3% bracket would only see a small increase annually. Those currently paying at the 6.2% level would have no standard deduction since their rate goes down considerably. Calculating an approximate cost of this, I suggested that we could plan in advance that Member Appropriations for 2026 (commonly referred to as "earmarks") could be eliminated for at least the first transition year. If we saw that revenue for 2026 was not increasing versus 2025 and we needed a further cushion to pay for the flat tax transition, we could freeze the budget for one year. Unfortunately, when I checked with Chairman Bannister on his thoughts, he had not seen the email sent to him.

I followed up with a more detailed email with additional calculations including an estimate of what this alternative would cost, and found out the Chairman's personal email address. This version, sent during Furlough week, was copied to Speaker Smith. From the lack of comment in our House Caucus meeting, it was clear either no one had read it, or decided not to even bring it up. I explained this to my fellow House Members in that same meeting. This is an easy to explain, easy to understand way to accomplish the task that causes substantially lower to no pain for our lower to middle income taxpayers. Later, with no response to me directly, I learned through our "Whip" that they consider this option too expensive and it cannot be done. I disagree. The way this can be accomplished is twofold. If we truly embrace the multiple benefits of a lower flat tax that puts our rate lower than both North Carolina and Georgia, we are likely to see a substantial increase in revenue due to much higher activity and investment by businesses in our state. This, combined with the ability to meaningfully cut our spending in a number of areas including corporate tax incentive packages, as well as a possible budget freeze for at least one year while we transition can lead to a very successful outcome.

If by the second half of next year's Session when we are finalizing the budget, we see that revenues appear to be falling short of the prior year's numbers used for planning purposes, we can work harder to cut expenses. For any tax plan transition such as this to work, we have to be willing to consider cuts if our revenue growth does not continue. One of the earlier announced efforts in the House was to form our own D.O.G.E. and start seriously cutting out any wasteful spending. So why would cutting spending not be a part of this Flat Tax Proposal? So far this year, and we only have two weeks left, I have seen absolutely no effort to cut spending in any department or agency, except Senator Peeler's sudden announcement that we will not approve any Member Appropriations for this year's budget. Instead, we have now been presented with various other complicated scenarios of how to pivot from the original plan, again without the suggestion that we simply cut spending to match our effort to cut the tax rate. By the way, two weeks ago, we had a visit from Congressman Henry Brown. While serving as Chairman of Ways & Means in the SC House, Henry helped deliver the largest tax cut in state history. Let's hope his legacy and timely visit brings inspiration to our current membership to do the same!

My new suggestion, which I will email to Chairman Bannister, Speaker Smith, and many other fellow Republican members of the House, will be to postpone further consideration of H.4216 to next year. By then, many of the current pressures on our economy will have resolved, such as the uncertainty caused by the trade negotiations, whether the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates (which should start again as early as May since our inflation numbers are now clearly decreasing), and the passing of the Federal Tax Package to make permanent the 2017 tax plan that will otherwise sunset at the end of 2025. By January of 2026 when we reconvene the 126th Session, I believe we have a very good likelihood that our nation as well as South Carolina will be experiencing continued strong revenue growth. At that point, changing our tax system to a flat 3.99% but maintaining the standard Federal deduction for all taxpayers in the 0% to 3% brackets will likely look more achievable, even to those who are reluctant to introduce any substantial cuts in budget spending, because the additional growth would, in that scenario, help "pay for" those tax cuts.