Green Party candidate: S.C. Needs to be more fiscally responsible
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South Carolina Now
Carlton Purvis
09/10/2010
Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Tom Clements says he would like to see money that comes into South Carolina applied more responsibly to address South Carolina's high jobless rate.
Clements stopped in Florence on Thursday on his way to speak in Lamar at an event for Delta Kappa Gamma, an honor society for women educators. He talked about his ideas for addressing some of South Carolina's biggest issues.
"We need to make sure that money coming into the Pee Dee region and South Carolina is producing the most jobs possible," he said. "I think we need to analyze what produces the most jobs per dollar and I don't think that's been part of the discussion."
Clements, referencing a University of Massachusetts-Amherst report, said $1 billion put toward personal consumption, health care, education, mass transit and infrastructure would create more jobs within the nation's economy than the same money put toward military spending. Currently, military spending accounts for almost half the federal budget.
"We need to apply efficiency tests to the money that's spent by the federal government and I don't think so much military spending passes muster on creating jobs," he said.
Clements' concerns are mirrored by a non-profit watchdog group who tracks federal spending and analyzes and clarifies federal spending policies.
According to data analysis by the National Priorities Project, South Carolina taxpayers will be responsible for $1.2 billion of war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan for the 2011 fiscal year.
A federal budget trade-offs calculator on the organization's website says that same money could provide low-income health care for 160,000 people, pay 22,000 elementary school teachers or provide VA medical care for 186,000 veterans in South Carolina for one year.
Clements seems determined to develop new ideas to stimulate jobs and spending in the state, including the introduction of a tax incentive for small businesses and larger companies to re-hire people who were laid off.
"I'm totally open to listening to people and small business owners who have any ideas or things they see that would help," he said. "The main thing I have to do is listen to people."
As the campaign picks up speed, Clements says his main focus isn't defeating controversial Democratic candidate Alvin Greene, but unseating Republican incumbent Jim Demint.
The latest Rasmussen poll results indicate residents prefer DeMint by a wide margin — leading Alvin Greene 63 percent to 19 percent.
When the Morning News first interviewed Clements in June his campaign had just started looking at ideas to raise money and plans for a steering committee were in the works.
Now with more than $20,000 raised, Clements says the campaign has yard signs, buttons and even a bumper sticker. The campaign opened an office in Columbia last week, he said.
Clements, a graduate of Emory University and the University of Georgia, works for the environmental organization Friends of the Earth on nuclear issues and is considered the public interest watchdog over the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site nuclear complex located near Aiken.
DeMint has been silent on offers for debates from both the Clements campaign and the media.
