The U.S. State With the Most Population Growth, and Why It Grows

The fact that it is not Texas or Florida that had the highest rate of population growth due to net domestic migration over the past two years, but South Carolina, comes as a surprise to many. Though the secret is out about the Palmetto State being a great place to live, South Carolina lawmakers are not resting on their laurels. In fact, the legislative session scheduled to wrap up in South Carolina in the coming days will go down as a historic one featuring the enactment of landmark reforms that will make the state’s tax and regulatory climate even more attractive than is already the case.

On May 7, just three weeks after Governor Henry McMaster’s (R-S.C.) Tax Day signing of legislation that will give South Carolina the nation’s lowest flat income tax in five years, the South Carolina Senate voted for final passage on H.3021, the Small Business Regulatory Freedom Act. Once Governor McMaster signs H.3021 into law, South Carolina will become the fifteenth state with REINS Act-style law that subjects costly regulations to legislative approval.

H.3021 faced a rockier and more arduous path to passage in South Carolina than one might expect in a deep red state with GOP supermajorities in both chambers. In fact, H.3021 had to survive a gauntlet of five subcommittee hearings. The REINS provision was even removed from H.3021 during the last subcommittee meeting, but it was restored during the bill’s final full committee hearing, albeit with a higher threshold for legislative oversight.   

The initial version of H.3021 that the South Carolina House passed last year would subject regulations with an annual economic impact of $1M over five years to an up-or-down vote in the legislature. However, when the REINS provision was restored during the  final full committee hearing on H.3021, it was amended back in with a higher threshold of $10M over five years.