Leger, who serves as the speaker pro-tem in the Louisiana House of
Representatives, addressed the weekly exercise of capitol-area media members intended
to demonstrate their relevance by attracting newsworthy speakers, a meeting of
the Press Club of Baton Rouge. Not only his position, which makes him likely
the most powerful Democrat in state government, but also his membership as
apparently the only Democrat in the Louisiana
Budget Reform Campaign made what he had to say of some note.
And on the subject of that affiliation with the group that terms
themselves the “fiscal hawks,” Leger did have an accurate observation. He noted
the internal contradiction that existed with the group’s presumed signature
achievement during the legislative system, asserting a sharp decrease in the amount
of “one-time money” in the budget, or dollars budgeted from recurring sources
that are not from the general fund and money that comes from one-off
transactions such as property sales. The main mechanism by which to replace
these bucks, was the use
of a tax amnesty program which, as far as he was concerned, “kicked the can
down the road” and “doesn’t fix the root problem.”
Rightly so. Amnesty is itself just another kind of one-time money, but
one that has escaped the fatwa issued
by the “hawks” and thereby is not part of the “problem” by their convenient
definition. Whether Leger admits to or actually understands the genuine root problem
is another matter. The use of one-time money merely is a symptom of the larger
disease that Louisiana’s fiscal policies cordons off all sorts of money from
general fund use, with little rationality or holistic analysis as to whether
revenues should be collected from a particular source in a particular amount
for a particular purpose. This straitjacket provides too much money for low
priority or even things that should not be done at all by government while
starving higher priority items. One-time money becomes a necessary corrective
to ensure that unused surpluses of cash taken from the people just don’t sit
around by shifting them from where they won’t get used to purposes of greater
need.
The hawks consistently have made the mistake of saying that by
suppressing the symptoms – the riddance of one-time money – fiscal health is
restored all the while the disease really runs unchecked. Leger seems
enthralled in this fantasy as well by proclaiming the reduction of one-time money
was a positive outcome (even with amnesty proceeds the amount being used in the
passed budget is about half of what originally had been budgeted) and never mentioning
the real disease cure – loosening dedications, acting upon a thorough review of
them to properly place priorities on them for annual budgeting untied to any
revenue source to give maximum discretion, and ditching revenue collection from
sources tied to purposes that are of low priority or should not be done by
government.
Worse from the perspective of offering solutions instead of gamesmanship,
in this talk he used his manipulation of the “hawks” as an example of how to
empower his political party. Perhaps earlier than anybody of his ilk, Leger
recognized how the one-time money issue could be used to drive a wedge between principled
and populist conservatism among his Republican opponents, certainly which would
have motivated him to join the “hawks.” With the “hawks” following the populist
tactic of creating bogeymen using symbols over substance to boost their political
fortunes and willing
to increase government’s redistributionist role to pull it off, the
traditional purveyors of this method the Democrats could bring them into their orbit
and get the “hawks” to assist in their never-ending quest to enlarge government.
And with the “hawks’” complicity Democrats succeeded, growing
government by $600 million (which is minus over $100 million in additional
revenues recognized late in the session) from the budget submitted by Gov. Bobby
Jindal. Which Leger applauded in his remarks, calling this an example of
working together to solve problems.
Thereby, Leger uncorks an oldie-but-goodie leftist tactic employed when
Democrats must face the consequences of losing the battle of ideas in
elections, as opposed to when they manage to win them. In that latter majority
situation, they plow ahead treating Republican opposition as illegitimate, if
they even recognize its existence.
But put them in the minority, and you get from them Leger’s rhetoric
where “working together” is the key to making policy beneficial to all and
needed for the future, where the choice becomes one between revanchist impulses
or progress, encapsulated in his query of “Are we going to fall back into our
old ways or will there be a renewed commitment to bipartisanship and moderate
policies ... against extremism?” Note how he accords the asserted inferior mode
of governance occurring in the recent
period of largely triumphant conservative-based reform (the “old”) that is “extremism”
while he defines as superior public policy the intentional insertion of
liberalism from “bipartisanship” to achieve somehow a kind of balance that
creates “moderate policies.”
Again, you never hear Democrats like Leger call for “bipartisanship” or
“moderate policies” when they are the majority and condemning their own “extremism;”
they just run as roughshod as they can over the minority (the fish rots
from the head down) in the belief they have the right to govern with what
they allege are better ideas. But suddenly it is illegitimate in the mind of
Leger for a majority other than his own, Republicans, to do the same over his
minority Democrats, and he demands a right to govern not deserved by their
inability to persuade enough voters. The hypocritical convenience of it all is
breathtaking but never unexpected.
The disingenuousness displayed by those remarks extends to others he
made concerning the state’s rejection of expansion of Medicaid made optional
under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). Leger calls
this decision not to increase costs and lower quality of care an example of
something “missed out this session” and should be reversed in the future. He
therefore recommended that the state make a waiver request to the federal
government to “devise our own program” and calls Jindal’s refusal to do so “irresponsible.”
But why do so when the federal
government already has answered the question negatively? In its infamous “Good
Friday” memo prior to the session it essentially stated that Medicaid reform
principles supported by Jindal and others were unwelcome in the
government-empowering framework that it wished to extend through Obamacare.
What would be the point when what remains permissible would provide for worse
and more expensive care than by not expanding coverage? Either Leger knows
this and spouts the line to try to score political points, or he’s ignorant,
which is not becoming of the House’s second-ranked figure.
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