Of course, the speaker must be South Carolina Gov, Nikki Haley, the subject of TIME‘s “10 Questions” feature this week:
You’re a Tea Party favorite. Do you see any similarity between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement?
No. The message of the Tea Party is, Government needs to stop. Stop spending. Stop the out-of-control government intrusion. The Occupy movement put up a lot of tents and talked about how they wanted to be like the 1% and were treated unfairly. …
… Students in South Carolina score lower than the national average across all measures. Yet it was the only state that declined $144 million in federal funding for schools. Why?
I think we need to focus on improving education. That is why I increased the amount of recurring dollars that we have in our budget. Do I think we need to take stimulus dollars that come with strings attached and tie our hands and tell us how to educate our kids in South Carolina? No. The best money spent is on teachers, students and technology in the classroom.
So why did you recently campaign against a raise for teachers, in favor of lowering the state’s corporate tax rate?
My focus right now is on jobs and the economy. We’ve brought in $5 billion worth of investment in the last year. To give state employees a pay raise when we were just coming off of a deficit wasn’t a priority. Getting people back to work was the priority.
