If you’re Gov. Bobby Jindal and his legislative budgetary allies, you call the bluff.
In the annual exercise of poker being played with real money called the
state’s budget, the three-player environment that has surfaced in the Louisiana
House of Representatives this year includes Jindal and conservatives who almost
exclusively are Republicans, a faction of Republicans and a few others who term
themselves “fiscal hawks” who have supported creating a slightly smaller budget
of a mixture of tax increases, spending cuts, tax credit reductions, bonus
funds in the form of a tax amnesty, and changes to the budget process connected
to this year’s product, and Democrats who want higher spending and taxes. The
Jindal crew has picked up an important ally in the Senate Republican majority,
giving them a firm grip on two of the three legs comprising the lawmaking
tripod.
This weekend, the HB 1 version (older one here)
that came back from the Senate challenged
the strange bedfellow alliance of the “hawks” and Democrats, in different
ways. For the former, it pumped in “one-time money,” a mixture of money that
includes nonrecurring revenues from things like property sales and recurring
dollars that do not originate from the general fund, and decoupled the several
tepid and one obnoxious reforms of them from passing as part of this
upcoming year’s budget. For the latter, it included items liberals had
complained about lack of inclusion such as a public elementary and secondary
educators pay raise although in a one-off form, more money to higher education,
the small tax increase on merchants, and generally bigger government. For the
former, it contests their public oaths about the budget and images as reformers
they have tried to carve, while for the latter it entices them to come aboard
by giving them stuff they publicly have stated they support.
At least for public consumption, this has
discomfited both. Some Democrats are making brave noises about how the
salary bonus, the biggest inducement, is not a “true” pay raise and they want
more and a permanent commitment or else they’ll vote against the Senate plan. In
fact, they tried to do this by getting that idea
bolted onto HB 677 (old version here),
the supplemental appropriations bill, only then to see the entire bill
defeated. Some “hawks” are saying they can’t go for it as long as the changes
they want to see in procedures exist only as the pilot programs the Senate
converted them to and with one-time money present in it.
Neither are credible threats, especially the Democrats’. That was the
purpose of the HB 677 amendment, to give Democrats an escape valve to say they
voted for a permanent raise. They simply cannot be allowed to have it known
that in the end they voted against giving teachers and colleges more money and
grew government unless they couldn’t get more of all. And they know they can’t,
with Jindal wielding veto power both full and line-item, and a Senate standing
in the way including all of their colleagues (except the most partisan, ideologically-driven,
race-baiting, and bitter one of them who, perhaps naturally enough, heads
the state party). Further, they surely realize that the only reason they are
getting more than nothing out of this year’s budget is because of the
internecine split among Republicans as part of their learning curve on how to
govern. So the HB 677 exercise provides proof, and now they can spew rhetoric
about how they tried to get more but got what best they could.
As for the “hawks,” ego, if not political viability, for them hang in
the balance, which will make them more bitterly hold out. Less than a month ago
many seemed to verify they
advocated hefty tax increases and slicing tax credits in exchange for
letting surplus money pile up unused, with no effort to match appropriate
revenue collection to necessity of spending. Instead, they have banked (or as
one put it, “took
some hard votes”) on creating an image that their marginal budget reform
proposals, which in the aggregate actually cause bigger and less efficient
government, solves all problems when these don’t even address the real root of
the flawed fiscal structure. By fostering the illusion that they are saviors to
address what ills the state’s fiscal policy, only that perception reinforced by
successful execution of their agenda can distract from their
recently-promulgated tax policy. That means hanging on, even going down in
flames, because otherwise their credibility drops among constituents, the
public, and the media precipitously.
The problem is, not enough are invested so personally and politically as
to stop matters if Jindal’s allies play things right. Currently, $272 million
in one-time money on recurring expenses pervades the budget, which according to
a “hawk”-inspired House rule
is about $84 million above needing a two-thirds vote to approve. But if the
leadership can find away to rearrange funding or strip enough to have around
$188 million only matched to recurring expenses, a simple majority of the
seated membership will suffice and there will not be enough solidarity among
Democrats and “hawks” to stop that.
And discussion of holding out for a special session as leverage is just
so much whistling into the wind. After having their day jobs disrupted for two
months and with their children out of school agitating with their spouses for a
vacation, the last thing many want to do is head right back to the capitol
where, because of the Senate’s proclivities and Jindal’s vetoes, they are
unlikely eventually to get any better deal with the fiscal year looming. Jindal
knows with little additional effort he can cast vetoes to shape things the way
he wants and/or to force them back into session again and again, risking having
no budget by the end of the fiscal year Jun. 30 and with the ability to blame
them entirely. So, that just drags out their misery for no gain.
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