The longer you have been in the Senate, the more responsibility you are given. I have been named Co-Chair of the Senate Education Committee by Chairman Greg Hembree, and Chairman of the Income & Sales Tax Finance Subcommittee by Chairman Harvey Peeler. I am honored they chose me to help fulfill these responsibilities.  

We have had a busy six weeks since this session began, and we are now getting bills out through the full committee process and filling the calendar. The Senate has passed several bills that include AI Child Abuse, Livestream of School Board Meetings, and Work Experience for Educators.  

Click here for a summary of these bills and others that have recently passed in the Senate.  

In his first weeks of office, President Donald Trump has brought a lot of attention to wasteful government spending though the Department of Government Spending (DOGE) initiative. There is actually a “DOGE” bill in the South Carolina Senate that passed out of the Finance Committee last week. We will see this bill come to the floor for debate starting this week.  

While I support this bill, I appreciated when Senator Hembree pointed out that “South Carolina was DOGE, before it was cool to be DOGE,” during our discussion in the Finance Committee meeting last week.  

Both the Senate and the House already have Oversight Committees. We also have the Legislative Audit Council (LAC) and the Office of the Inspector General (created several years ago). It will be interesting to see if we pass the new DOGE bill or choose to expand the power of the Inspector General and LAC. Rest assured; we are constantly looking for wasteful spending.  

Last Thursday afternoon, the Judiciary Subcommittee Bill S244, the Justice Act of 2025 (Tort Reform), was voted unanimously out of subcommittee after several weeks of testimony. This vote is not necessarily an indication of unanimous support for the bill, but it is a unanimous vote to send the bill to the full Judiciary Committee meeting for amending. The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow after the Senate adjourns.  

This bill, of which I am a co-sponsor, is getting a lot of attention on social media and I predict you will soon be seeing television advertisements as well. Unfortunately, these ads contain personal attacks and misleading information about the bill and its sponsor, Senator Shane Massey of Edgefield (our Senate Majority Leader). I have always believed if you had to try and take someone down to prove a point – you must not really have a good point to make.   

While we are a long way from a final bill, our hope is to get a very strong Tort Reform bill out of the Senate because we expect the House to water it down. I believe the bill will end up in a Conference Committee. I will not vote for the final bill if it’s just a “window dressing” and doesn’t produce the results we need for our small businesses and households.  

Click here for a well written explanation of S244, created by the South Carolina Coalition for Lawsuit Reform.