Election trumps business issues in S.C. meetings (pun intended) | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Thirty representatives from South Carolina businesses met with congressional leaders on Tuesday as part of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce’s first D.C. Fly-In.

Spanning both family-owned businesses and the South Carolina branches of large corporations, the business leaders got a chance to meet legislators and policy experts and ask them about issues that directly affect the state.

“It’s important for businesses to be able to interact directly with them, and this gives an opportunity for the South Carolina business community to come to the Capitol and talk to their legislative delegation and leadership,” S.C. Chamber of Commerce CEO Ted Pitts told McClatchy after the meeting.

The group heard from their two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, as well as Republican Reps. Mark Sanford, Tom Rice, and Jeff Duncan and Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn. They also got a chance to ask questions about broader policy issues in meetings with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

While there was plenty of praise from the chamber’s members for their delegation’s leadership in Congress, there also seemed to be one overarching theme – why can’t anything get done?

Over the course of the afternoon, the questions ranged from tax reform to energy policy, from healthcare to international trade. Above all loomed the shadow of the upcoming presidential election.

“You’re not going to see anything happen on that front,” Sanford said when asked about tax legislation. “It is World War I and the no man’s land in between is right now, it will stay that way I suspect until November, so you’re going to see funding for the year and that’s about it.”

Speaking about the Affordable Care Act and its impact on businesses, Burr had a similar tone.

“If we don’t have new leadership in November we’re never getting rid of it, we’re going to have to live with it,” he said.

Burr said he was amazed by the diversity of support for Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

“It is not uncommon for me to go into a room and a CEO of a successful business following me out and saying ‘I think I’m going to support Trump’,” Burr told the group. “And the next person’s unemployed and hasn’t had a job for a year and they say ‘I’m going to support Trump.’ I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Clyburn, the Palmetto State’s only Democrat in Congress, said that the emphasis on politicizing issues was one of the main roadblocks to getting things done in Congress.

“This attitude that it’s conservatism or nothing is downright silly. We have to look at the issues to get problems solved, not label certain things as being conservative issues or liberal issues. We’re doing that instead of really looking at what ails us, especially in South Carolina,” he said.

The group asked about recent Obama administration decisions affecting South Carolina, including scrapping the MOX project and not allowing leases for offshore drilling on South Carolina’s coast.

Rice said he remained a proponent of energy exploration off the state’s coastline. “It would be an economic boost to South Carolina in a lot of ways, not only with good paying jobs and steady income for the state but it’s everything that supports that activity,” he said. “Everything you can imagine has to be produced on onshore, so that’d be an economic boost you’d see that in those coastal counties.”

In response to a question from Eric Knox, of the global infrastructure firm AECOM, Graham predicted the eventual completion of the unfinished $5 billion plutonium recycling project at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.. The Obama administration scrapped the program in its 2017 fiscal year budget in favor of a cheaper alternative in New Mexico.

“There is no other option that will work,” Graham said about about the facility. “The [Department of Energy] has demonized the MOX project, but it’s now 70 percent done and there’s no way that New Mexico is going to agree to these changes.”

When their congressmen told them that they could ask anything, a few took them at their word.

“Can we bring back Cubans now – Cuban cigars?” one member asked Sanford, who was telling them about his recent trip to Havana.

“Yes, you can.”