Senate boss Lee Schoenbeck (R-5/Lake Kampeska) declined to say Tuesday whether Governor Kristi Noem’s promised food-tax repeal was totally dead after Republicans on House Appropriations looked the Governor in the eye and killed her House Bill 1075. But Schoenbeck’s loyal lieutenant Senator Casey Crabtree (R-8/Madison) says the Governor’s grand (Democratic!) campaign promise is mostly dead:
The push for tax relief now moves to the South Dakota Senate, but the chamber’s majority leader says the governor’s call to remove the state sales tax from groceries probably won’t be part of the discussion.
Republican Sen. Casey Crabtree told news reporters Thursday that talks will likely focus on the state sales-tax cut that the House of Representatives approved Wednesday.
He said there also could be consideration of a property-tax cut for homeowners that was set aside by the House Appropriations Committee the day before [Bob Mercer, “Food-Tax Cut Isn’t a Priority in SD Senate, Crabtree Says,” KELO-TV, 2023.02.23].
Not only is the Senate probably not going to try reviving the food tax, but the more handsome chamber is more likely to revisit the property-tax cut floated by Representative Trish Ladner (R-30/Hot Springs). That the mainstream Senate Majority Leader would speak more optimistically about tax-cut bill from a Black Hills back-bencher who runs with the anti-Schoenbeck radicals than about the marquee campaign promise made by his own beloved Governor indicates just how ineffectively Noem has worked to push her policy agenda.
Confronted with numerous Noem policy failures, Crabtree nonetheless continues to spout nonsense compliments about South Dakota’s most ineffective Governor this century:
“I don’t think they’re losses,” he said. “If this was baseball, she’d be going in the Hall of Fame” [Mercer, 2023.02.23].
If this Session were baseball, Noem wouldn’t even be a wild card in the playoffs.
Democrats (who have nothing to lose and thus should speak forthrightly like this more often!) more accurately describe Noem’s failure on the food-tax repeal as a failure to exercise basic political skills that should come far more easily to a Republican Governor with a 63% popular mandate and 90% of the Legislature in her party than to wildly outnumbered Democrats:
South Dakota Democratic Party Chair Randy Seiler: “Democrats have long supported cutting the sales tax on food in South Dakota, but Gov. Noem didn’t put in the work to do it right. She didn’t work with stakeholders, including tribal nations, or even show up in the Capitol to speak with legislators about the bill until the last minute. Gov. Noem’s support for cutting the sales tax on food was nothing more than a political stunt to win her an election, and when it came to the hard work of legislating, she let the people of South Dakota down.”
House Democratic Leader Oren Lesmeister (D-28A/Parade): “I wish the Governor would have reached out to our caucus and had a serious conversation with us on this issue, but at this time that has not happened.”
Senate Democratic Leader Reynold Nesiba (D-Sioux Falls): “Unlike the Governor, SD Democratic leaders are regularly talking with Republican lawmakers in the Capitol. It was clear to me weeks ago that her 4.5-cent proposal would not get through the SD Senate this year. However, I do believe a 2-cent reduction would have had a chance to pass both the House and the Senate. The Governor should have worked with Democrats and like-minded Republicans on this compromise legislation. My understanding is that she opposed any amendment to her bill. It did not help that she has avoided press conferences with local reporters for the last seven weeks where she could have been promoting this tax reduction to her constituents” [South Dakota Democratic Party, press release, 2023.02.21].
Hey, South Dakota, if y’all just want a Governor who looks cute on a horse, well, I guess, if you squinch your eyes and look from a distance, you’ve got that. But don’t tell me you have an executive who knows how to pass real practical policy.
I’ve always said she is a show pony, not a work horse.
This was very effective, just ask Ian. Noem is for the people on the face of it, but in reality she was never for the Democratic idea. You’ve been had South Dakotan’s. Now she will sign a bill that lowers taxes on the wealthy. Campaign on one idea switcheroo to your core value of kiss the ring of the wealthy. No matter where that ring is located.
At least she still tried to pass 1075.
This will change when the voters them selves (electors) decide they are Governors, the NOW Governors. All Goosesteppers are only Temporary Governors, such as noem and daugaaaard.
Too many Governors and legislators have an attitude of , OK you elected me, shut the f@@@ up and let me decide what you should get. Hence the repeal of Ethics law, rec marijuana .
As long as voters do not feel they are NOT Governors Now, the real source of power, they will keep electing Republi-doggies abd Demo-jackals tp represent and ignore them.
Demi rars voting against 1075? Jackals.
Democratscand Republicans vote for what they want, they ignore the people who voted for them.
Governors Now, that’s us, can create businesses and nonprofits that can give us everything our Dog and Jackal Government won’t!
You want to pretend that Dogs and Jackals in Pierre can with their 4 Billion dollar Dog wallet can tell us what to do?
With the law of good we can do more than the Dog and jackal government can do with less money!
Note to Kristi: Hang it up, girl, and resign. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. Three electoral votes from a hopelessly red state don’t mean diddley to a national MAGA ticket. And you’re a massive failure in Pierre.
Noem has squandered any chance of getting elected outside South Dakota by squandering both terms as Governor with all statewide seats and 91 percent of the legislature also being Republican. Bill Janklow woulda given his left testicle to have that much power in office. The SDGOP is stuck with Noem as the state’s chief executive. She’s clueless (unless someone hands her a script), lazy and incompetent. Her narcissism is unbridled and that prevents her from following common sense. She craves fame but won’t do the hard work to earn it. Republican legislators openly loathe her.
Either Donald Trump or Ron DiSantis will be the RNC’s nominee next year. MAGA needs the swing states it’s been losing since 2008. Adding Noem to the ticket adds nothing. Kristi is stuck in Pierre until 2027. She could quit, or remain in that $3 million prison next to Capitol Lake, behind her new iron fence with all those new designer rugs, staring to the east from her new sauna. Alas, what coulda been, Kristi, never was. Reminds me of an old song my beloved grandma played on her piano in the front room:
Now if I had wings like an an-gel
O-ver these pri-son walls I would fly
And I’d fly to the arms of my poor dar-lin’
And there I’d be wil-ling to die.
The political environment we are in is strange .
Kristi Noem Governor, head of the Dog Party smtestified in person for passing 1075. Plus.
Reservation government’s and Democrats voted against 1075. Minus. Bad.
The people usually pass good initiatives and constitutional amendments but vote for RepubliDogs and DemoJackals.
The people deserve the government they chose.
ABC- Allow me to offer a small tweak to your last statement to align your saying with what people have told me about love, “People choose the government (love) they feel worthy of”
From that standpoint, your beseeching and affirmations are a helpful push in the right direction. What retardant led to our low self-esteem? Geographically, physically and materially, we’re in a choice position. Maybe it is the lack of reconciling with the land and souls that were and still are plundered here….?
96Tears, don’t count out the REAL upward move for MAGA political shakers: FOX News host (assuming Dominion leaves them a nickel to stay in business). That would let her campaign 24-7 and never have to actually govern.
It is the usual philosophy of our political leaders in South Dakota. ( It’s not a terrible idea, but we can’t go along. If we went along it would become a slippery slope. They would then want something else down the line and we just can’t have that. It would intrude on our back pocket finances and we can’t have these intrusions into what is coming in and what we feel is rightfully ours.)