H2-Seg3-TCJS- Tues1/13/26- Interview with Former SC Rep Johnathan Hill about SC BAD BILLS list

H2-Seg3-TCJS- Tues1/13/26- Interview with Former SC Rep Johnathan Hill about SC BAD BILLS list 00:00 Well, can you believe it? The South Carolina State Legislature is back in session and we've already got some bad bills. If you want to keep up with the bad bills that are going on in Columbia, I highly recommend you subscribe to State Representative Jonathan Hill's bad bill sheet. He joins us right now. Jonathan, welcome to the program. Hope you're doing well. Happy New Year. Thank you, Charlie. Appreciate you having me on. 00:23 Already bad bills. I'm going to start off with one that is kind of weird with me. This whole thing about casino gambling here in South Carolina, whenever we see casino gambling, a lot of other bad things come along with it, doesn't Yeah, I think that's pretty clear to everybody. You can just look and see what's happened in other states. I will say that it's truly a South Carolina way to do it to say we're going to have casinos 00:52 and we're going to create a brand new government agency to decide which casinos get to be here and basically create a total state-run monopoly around that. mean, whether you're coming at this from a social perspective that we shouldn't have casino gambling at all, or whether you're coming at it from a free market perspective of the government shouldn't decide which companies get to come here, the bill is just horrible either way you look at it. 01:18 So this new gambling commission, who would that be comprised by? uh Well, the details are in the bill. And like I said, you know, it's not necessarily a done deal by any stretch. I mean, in many cases, let's see, uh like so many boards and commissions that govern different things, it's a hybrid thing between the 01:47 Right, the governor and legislators would make the appointment. Okay. Yeah, like so many other things. that's a system that has proved its failures over and over again in South Carolina. It really does. Tell us about the uh privilege tax of 15%. The privilege tax? uh you know, that's, what would the justification be for that? that 02:14 Yeah, mean, it puts a 15 % on gross gaming revenue. We're talking about potentially a lot of money here. Where would that money go? Well, the current amendment to the bill seems to be earmarking that for at least a portion of that fund to the counties that presumably would be affected by the locations of these casinos. 02:40 um Arguably, that funding would go towards infrastructure and emergency services and law enforcement and healthcare and whatever else. Yeah. All the usual suspects, right? Right. In your list of the bad bills, one says the income tax hike disguised as a tax cut. How does that work? Yeah. If you're going to cut the income tax, what we would expect is to see the percentage of income tax 03:09 decrease over time or all at once like we could just zero it out today and we'd be fine. uh But that's not what they did. They totally reinvented the income tax structure so that some people are going to pay more and some people are going to pay less. And from the state's perspective, overall, it's going to be less income tax revenue coming in. That is a bizarre way to do it. And it's definitely a proposal that a policy proposal that comes from 03:39 you know, those in the ivory tower of the Capitol, uh you know, not looking at this thing from the taxpayer perspective. I mean, they tried to pass a so-called tax cut that would actually raise taxes on 60 % of South Carolinians. Why can't they get this figured out? Well, it's a great question. I mean, I've always said, Charlie, that, uh you know, tyrants are never willingly going to give up one iota uh or even one penny. 04:07 of your money or control over your life, has to be forcibly taken from them by we the people. They're never going to give up money willingly. And so, you know, it seems to me like uh that that's an element at play here. ah You know, in all seriousness, if they if ...