US Rep. Tom Rice’s thoughts on I-73, infrastructure, flooding and his election campaign
US Congressional Representative Tom Rice sat down with Sun News Reporter Tyler Fleming to discuss infrastructure, flood mitigation and the upcoming election season.
The following “question and answer” article is entirely Rice’s own words. This story was abbreviated for space and slightly edited for clarity purposes.
The Sun News: We’ve heard a lot about an infrastructure bill that could help build roads across the country and potentially I-73. Where do we stand on that bill?
Tom Rice: I don’t really think we’re going to have a major initiative like that in an election year. I think it will be President Trump’s top priorities in his second term. So he has followed through on a lot of the things he said he wanted to do in terms of reinvigorating the American economy and to put the American worker on an even playing field with everyone else in the world.
And some of the poorest counties have benefited. People always say “well that’s for people at the top,” but the employment in Marion County, South Carolina, was 9.6 percent in January 2017 when President Trump took office and today it is about 4 percent. These things do matter.
The infrastructure bill needs to be talked about. There is talk about what form it would take and how much money would be involved. I know $2 trillion is his goal. Now if we get exactly that much, I don’t know, but I promise you I’ve been working on I-73 and I’m not going to stop now. I want this thing shovel ready. I want the local match in place, which is important to bring us to the top of the list and hopefully it will be ready when that package does come in.
TSN: Horry County wants everyone to put “skin in the game” to build I-73, but so far hasn’t seen the support elsewhere. How important is I-73 for state and federal leaders?
Rice: It’s on everyone’s mind because it is so important for the region. And Horry County has done a lot of its own infrastructure work. I wish I could waive a magic wand and make it possible for the federal government to fund every last dime of every project we do again. But that’s not possible, that’s not realistic. What the government looks for now, the federal government particularly, is to leverage its investment. Historically when the federal government was running surpluses or close to it, and they had more money than they could spend, they would pay 80 percent of an interstate project and that would look for the state to contribute 20 percent. Those days are gone and they will never come back. But we need this road desperately.
So what the federal government looks for is leverage.
They look for the best investment, so for every dollar the put in they want the most money spent on the state and local level. So if we can put these tourist dollars, because most of the money in this hospitality tax is tourist dollars. People need to understand that. By far most of the money is tourist dollars. If we can use those tourist dollars to leverage federal dollars, it just gives us a much better chance to get those dollars.
TSN: How has the lawsuit between Myrtle Beach and Horry County changed how people perceive local efforts to build the road?
Rice: Certainly all the litigation and the arguing back and forth has created a cloud of uncertainty over the availability of local monies. It is truly unfortunate. Too often we complain that we get overlooked by Columbia and the federal level because so much of the money goes to Charleston, Columbia and Greenville. And I complained about that when I was at county council.
But the truth is, right now we got the governor trying to help us, the department of transportation. The governor came down here and asked the local governments to try to bring this to resolution and to get their act together. We have both senators, too. As soon as Gov. Henry McMaster won past the election, he applied for a $360 million grant in federal money using the local match money that the county had signed a contract with DOT that had match money. Almost as soon as he applied for the grant, the litigation started.
Absolutely it created a pall of uncertainty over that grant request.
Now were we ever going to get the whole $365 million? Doubtful. But I am confident that if we didn’t get some money that time we would have gotten it next time. I’m uncertain about filing another grant request until all this stuff is worked through.
TSN: A lot of critics of I-73 say we need to improve what current roads we have before building I-73, how do you respond to that?
Rice: My first response to that is we are doing that. We are doing that. I don’t know of any area that is doing more of that. We just opened the extension of 31. It took too long. I wish it would have happened sooner, there was some problems with the contractor. But they’re widening Carolina Forest Boulevard. They’re making improvements all over this county all the time. This county’s infrastructure is vastly different: 707 is four lanes, 544, Glenn’s Bay Road, all these roads are being improved all over this county. That’s not going to stop. I don’t know how many miles of dirt roads have been paved in the county.
There are all these dozens of projects that have been accomplished and continue to go on. So when people say we need to work on local infrastructure, we are, well the county is working for infrastructure. Again, I wish I could wave a magic wand and make all our transportation problems go away. But I promise you this, the biggest transportation problem we got in this county is 501. And I-73 will take traffic off 501.
TSN: Are there any other road projects you think should be a priority moving forward?
Rice: I think certainly the Southern Evacuation Lifeline project needs to get done, that’s probably the next biggest thing. But really that’s a part of I-73. And then Highway 90 needs to be four lanes, and Highway 521 coming out of Georgetown needs four lanes. There are a lot of things that need to happen. Actually, what we need to do is take Highway 31 and takes a left toward Highway 707 between Socastee and Murrells inlet. That needs to go right and cross the river. We need four-lane Highway 701 between Conway and Georgetown. Then you would really have a bypass where people can ride through and not create all this traffic.
TSN: Anything else you’d like to say about infrastructure before we change topics?
Rice: Again, I really believe this will bring prosperity. A perfect example of infrastructure bringing prosperity. I had three of the poorest counties in the state. Between the invigoration of the national economy with tax reform and regulation reform, and between the Dillon Inland Port being built, the unemployment rate in Marion County is below 4 percent. I’m real proud of that. That’s an example of infrastructure actually impacting people’s lives in Marion, Dillon and Marlboro counties. In every one of them the employment rate is below 5 percent. That is an incredible achievement and really something we didn’t think was possible seven years ago when I ran for Congress. Back then the unemployment rate was over 10 percent and now they’re all below 5 percent. What a fascinating success story and a big part of that is infrastructure. The same thing can happen here, we just have to have the infrastructure.
Flooding
TSN: Horry County is currently working on plans to get FEMA and HUD funding to help with disaster relief and future storm mitigation. What do you see as your roll in securing those funds?
Rice: When I ran for Congress, I was a tax lawyer CPA. I knew very little about disaster recovery programs and unfortunately I’ve had to learn. We’ve had three storms in five years. What I have done is to take up our banner, to make our case for mitigation proceeds and disaster recovery after every storm. I have been successful in bringing money here. For example, in Matthew we got a little over $100 million in disaster money. After Florence, well, we’re at $75 million right now, but we will be over $100 million. And then we got mitigation money to mitigate against future storms. We got $168 million released about three or four months ago.
The Governor has his Floodwater Commission that is coming up with proposals and I was on the commission. $168 million sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money, but when you talk about the thousands of potential projects we could undertake that would do something to mitigate against flooding in the vast area we’re talking about, because all eight of my counties were included as disaster areas, it’s really not enough.
So we have to prioritize that money on projects that would get the most benefit. That’s what I see my goal as to advocate for my district for disaster relief monies and make sure those dollars are used in the most wise way. In Hurricane Matthew, I will tell you, that disaster recovery is not a strong suit for national government. Even when they make the money available, it’s difficult to get it to the people you want it used for. In Hurricane Matthew, we got over $100 million and that money was to be used to rebuild 1,300 homes. And that was three-and-a-half years ago, and so far we are through about 900. And all of this money is going to indigent families, that’s the top priority obviously. We had 3,000-plus applications, 1,300 accepted and 850 I think built so far.
That means there are 400 indigent families that are living in substandard housing. That’s not acceptable. The really sad part is the federal government holds us up as a model: “look at how quickly we did it in South Carolina.”
TSN: Do you have any ideas to improve the disaster relief process?
Rice: I have a bill up right now that is tax relief for disaster affected areas. Right now, unfortunately, so much of this disaster recovery is subjective. It’s willy-nilly. The level of recovery for a particular area depends on the rank of their representative. That’s just wrong. It’s almost like an earmark where, earmarks are illegal in Congress, but it’s a disguised earmark where if your representative has lots of power, then you get more recovery than an area that doesn’t have a lot of power. An example, during the last round of recovery, is California. Well I proposed a round of tax benefits that would go to all communities that had been affected in last year’s disasters.
We got that disaster package passed, but the head of the tax writing committee in Congress, in the ways and means, is from California and he stuck an additional, now mine was across the board, he stuck an additional thing for California that they got double the low-income housing credits. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars. South Carolina could have used low-income housing, too. But because he is the head of the committee he gets to stick that in, and that’s not right. That is immoral in my opinion.
So my bill would provide for a standard list of tax provisions, that any time there is a federally declared disaster area, those things apply. It doesn’t require some willy-nilly subjective action from Congress to get those things approved. In terms of the actual level of mitigation funding and the level of disaster recovery money, it wouldn’t make that objective. But I wish I could come up with a mechanism to make that objective, but I haven’t figured it out yet.
TSN: Obviously Southern California is a wealthier area of the country with a lot of name recognition. Does location play into account when deciding where to allocate disaster money?
Rice: I would say probably not. For some reason the Democrats have been very concerned about Puerto Rico. I’m not saying Puerto Rico wasn’t devastated by the hurricane a few years ago and they are Americans and are entitled to disaster recovery like anyone else. But the level of recovery the Democrats have fought for at every turn, at every level, they want to add more money to Puerto Rico that it is multiples of what people in this area got from Hurricane Florence. So I’ve spoken with friends on the Democrat side, including Rep. Jim Clyburn, about why are you fighting so hard to give Puerto Rico multiples of what the people in South Carolina desperately need. And I have had the same conversation about California.
FEMA and HUD, FEMA is the initial recovery agency and then HUD takes over for housing, they have these rules about how they calculate damages for a given area. For example, and I had this conversation with Mr. Clyburn in the last month, that they don’t count an area unless there is $10 million in damages in the county or a zip code has at least $2 million. If you live in Nichols, it takes a lot more damage and a lot more houses destroyed to get to $10 million thresholds than if you live in Malibu, California.
You’re penalizing people who have nothing because they have nothing. And that makes absolutely no sense. I’m supposed to be meeting with Mr. Clyburn to work on those rules because it really is a shame that people get penalized.
TSN: We’ve seen routine flooding here and in Texas, really across the southeast. How important do you think flood mitigation will become for the federal government moving forward?
Rice: I think the federal government has been in the flood business for too long. I always encourage people to buy flood insurance. I attended a meeting with people who flooded, and I brought the Army Corps of Engineers and the chairman of the Governor’s floodwater commission and other folks together. You know people come and ask me questions, I’m not an engineer, I’m not a hydrologist. I can’t tell you if deepening this channel will work or digging a new channel here. So I try to put the experts all in the same room.
But we can’t solve every problem, so we have to do is take the limited money we have, we just got $165 million, and try to allocate that money in the most responsible way. I will tell you that I did not know until I was in Congress, and I grew up here, that this entire district is one big floodplain. And it is. Basically five river systems converge here.
I’ve read that water that falls in Blowing Rock, N.C., flows out Winyah Bay. When you think about that, and how fairly flat this whole area is and how many river systems flow through, it doesn’t feel physically possible that you could actually mitigate all this risk for floods, but we’re going to try to do what we can to make sure we do what will have the most impact on people.
I don’t think that is everything you can do to stop any damage from a storm that stops for four days and drops 30 inches of rain. That just isn’t going to happen.
Re-election
TSN: It’s an election year and you’re seeking another term in office. What are some of your campaign priorities moving forward?
Rice: From the time I ran the first time till today, the nameplate on my desk says “jobs, jobs, jobs.” My favorite nickname for this country is the Land of Opportunity. I want to make sure that I do everything I can to provide opportunity to everybody, but particularly the young people in this district. In 2012, when I was running I found an economic professor at Harvard named Michael Porter and he had written a menu of things our country needed to be doing to make itself competitive. So he made a list of 10 or 12 different items.
I actually went to the Obama White House when I first got to Washington and said “y’all and John Boehner should do a joint symposium on American competitiveness. This is something we can all agree on. We might not agree on the details, but we can agree we need to make the country competitive and need to put Americans on a level playing field.” But between them and Boehner there was too much mistrust and I didn’t get too far.
But since Donald Trump has been in officer, tax reform, negotiating one-sided trade agreements or restructuring them, infrastructure inform, are all his priorities. I don’t know if he has ever seen Michael Porter’s list, but he is working right down this list. And when people ask why are you supporting Donald Trump I say it’s because he is working on the same things I campaigned on in 2012 before Donald Trump ever thought about running for president.
I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished between him and Congress. I am proud of our national unemployment, I’m proud our wages are growing — that hadn’t been seen in a long time. That the American middle class is growing and getting a raise. I think what we set out to do is working.
This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 10:47 AM with the headline "US Rep. Tom Rice’s thoughts on I-73, infrastructure, flooding and his election campaign."
