The end product raised some
business taxes, some permanently so, most of which will get passed along to
consumers, as well as hiked the state sales taxes a penny and escalated in
minor fashion other excise taxes. It featured some modest cuts to government
spending, although admittedly perhaps reducing as much as possible given the
short remainder of the fiscal year. More notable for what it did not do, it
rejected overtures to double the Earned Income Tax Credit and to create more progressive
individual taxation, even as it left the door open for that by putting forth a
constitutional amendment that could wipe out deductibility of individual income
tax credits for federal taxes paid.
Naturally, that result did not sit
well with Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, who
wailed about an estimated $800 million shortfall from his preferred spending
level for next fiscal year, called those legislators who did not agree with his
resistance to right-sizing government derelict and not working together for the
good of the state, and lied about the nature of the recurring revenue generated
being ineligible for use for that purpose and also about that future cuts would
have to go mostly to higher education and health care. He errantly and
audaciously alleged he had intended for the session to undertake structural
reform, when he really meant that agenda only entailed increasing taxes to
redistribute more wealth.
Little of what he said bore any
resemblance to reality. Taxes lasting from Apr. 1, 2016 through Jun. 30, 2018 qualify
as recurring revenue; by insinuating otherwise Edwards merely wanted to
throw a tantrum over the Republican-controlled House scuttling his five-year
demand that would have made it easier to institutionalize outsized government. The
Legislature can appropriate funds however it likes, including casting off any number
of statutory dedications in order not to have the brunt of reductions fall onto
health care and higher education. And he hamstrung the session’s reputed reform
goal from the start by not permitting legislation on items such as revenue
sharing and pension reform.
Even that $800 million gap does not
seem that daunting to close. Some legislators felt that, after some jiggling around
with Medicaid funding that $300 million could come off that. Reduce
Taylor Opportunity Program for Students funding 80 percent to make it a
true scholarship program and eliminate
Medicaid expansion and that’s almost that much again. Legislating away the concept
of a “charity hospital” could make up the rest.
In other words, the
my-way-or-the-highway complainer-in-chief exemplified the meaning of a sore
loser, echoed by some of his fellow partisans, and seems ready again to take
hostage high profile state programs to terrorize the public into discounting
the possibility of creating more efficient government that prioritizes its
outlays rationally. Perhaps cementing his cluelessness, he called this day
where legislative unwillingness to take more of what people earn for longer
than necessary “not our best,” when in fact its outcome provided cautious
optimism that, at long last, Louisiana will take a step forward towards fiscal reform
and budgetary discipline.
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