As South Carolina continues to grow, Graham said state leaders have to balance economic growth with investments in roads, water, and sewer systems while protecting the natural resources that attract people to South Carolina in the first place.
“The hardest thing for a politician to do is to do something that doesn’t have immediate impact for today, so I always look at projects that will create capacity down the road and invest in them first. You got to maintain what you got, but you also have to plan to meet growth. And without road, water and sewer, you can’t grow healthy, you can’t grow smart. So that’s a constant struggle for me is how to put money into maintaining what we got, and how do you build new infrastructure? And I think I’ve reached a pretty good balance in my political life of doing both, but there’ll come a day where growth gets to be too much too quick and will destroy our quality of life. I think a lot about that, and I understand where the tipping point is at,” Graham said.
