Sen. Scott discusses Economics, Responds to Critic at Sun City

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U.S. Sen. Tim Scott fielded questions from Sun City Hilton Head residents Monday, ranging from taxes on Social Security benefits to criticism he received earlier this year from a North Carolina NAACP leader.

One audience member asked if there was any way to avoid taxing Social Security benefits.

Scott, R-S.C., said no such plan is being considered, and the U.S. has constructed a system that isn't as sustainable as it was designed to be. His first objective is to make sure people continue to maintain their benefits.

Another asked how Scott would respond to North Carolina NAACP president William Barber, who called him "Uncle Tom."

(Barber actually said during a Martin Luther King Jr. event in Columbia in January, according to The (Columbia) State newspaper: "A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy. The extreme right wing down here (in South Carolina) finds a black guy to be senator and claims he's the first black senator since Reconstruction and then he goes to Washington, D.C., and articulates the agenda of the tea party.")

By Amy Bredeson

Scott said he would tell Barber that his name is Tim, not Tom. After the crowd stopped laughing, he went on to say his agenda is very much an American agenda.

"I look at ways to help the downtrodden, the kid that grows up in a single-parent household like I did, who's stuck in poverty, mired in hopelessness like I was," he said. "But I don't think the way that we do that is by redistributing the resources in an unsustainable way."

Scott spoke about the importance of quality education and making sure it is available in every zip code. The country needs more workers, and the way to create workers is through education.

He said the U.S. has 4.8 million jobs that are unfilled; 70,000 of those are in South Carolina. They aren't filled because workers aren't qualified. He said apprenticeship programs are critical.

He also said the debate about raising the minimum wage is misguided.

"So while the president and others have been focused on trying to figure out how to get the wages to go up, here's how you do it," he said. "You grow the economy faster than you're growing the workers, and the wages go up."

One audience member asked about lowering prescription costs.

Scott said the U.S. approval process to get drugs to market is the most expensive in the world, and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee he is a member of is studying how to streamline FDA approvals.

Another Sun City resident asked how conservatives could win the next national election without dirty politics.

"In order for us to win national elections, I think it comes down to simply, people do not care about what you know until they know how much you care," Scott said. "We have to start having conversations, not about pie charts, but about people."

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