Entering this potential two-week convocation,
called as temporary taxes rolling off at the fiscal year’s conclusion would
leave a deficit of nearly $1 billion at current spending trends, the GOP knew
that Edwards would attempt to use this as an opportunity to increase taxes
permanently. With his unwillingness to deviate from this conflation of tax reform
and hikes, and with reform parameters ill-defined and incompletely confected
into his call that triggered the convening, legislators
could do nothing lasting and would have to leave genuine reform for the future.
Last week, at first some Republicans didn’t get
it. State Rep. Stephen
Dwight offered up his HB 23 that
would have enacted a permanent tax increase of a half cent of sales tax. This
would admit that government needed permanent expansion, ratifying
state-sourced spending that rose at twice the rate of inflation during the
first two years of Edwards’ term. Democrats sought to pile on with a pair of
bills raising telephone taxes advancing out of committee.
But better sense prevailed. Dwight had his bill amended in committee to impose the hike for only a quarter cent and for just three additional years. This mimicked the 2016 approach that produced the one cent of sales tax due to disappear, creation of a bridge buying time for rational, comprehensive reform.
Yet that opportunity for change did not happen due
to Edwards’ insistence primarily that “reform” equate to permanent tax hikes,
locking in expanded government, and secondarily that any such increase fall very
disproportionately on Louisianans above lower class. He hasn’t changed his
mind, so the 36-month partial extension conveniently stretches past the end of
his term, where he faces uncertain at best prospects for reelection, with his
absence removing his obstructionism.
However, neither have diehard liberals among
legislative Democrats had a change of heart. Perhaps the most influential of
the bunch, Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee Chairman J.P. Morrell, called HB 23 or any
approach that relied on temporary sales taxes a nonstarter in his mind.
Apparently agreeing was the Louisiana
Legislative Black Caucus. who earlier
this week made it known to the House Republican leadership that it would
block such legislation. For any tax measure to pass, it must gain a two-thirds
vote in each chamber, giving the LLBC an effective veto power.
Then again, conservative House Republicans can do
the same. And, the way things stand, if a standoff results in inadequate
revenue legislation making into law, Democrats and especially Edwards have much
more to lose than do GOP legislators.
If large cuts must come to state government
because of no resolution, Democrats will bear the blame in the eyes of most
voters. The electorate tends to personify state actions in the governor’s form,
even if the Legislature passes the final product for his signature. Edwards can
try to spin a story about how a Republican-controlled legislature could not
pass out a revenue-raising bill he claims needed to prevent cuts that he would make,
but most voters won’t pay attention to that.
And of those who do, the GOP has an easy rebuttal:
it offered up legislation to provide the funds, but Democrats scuttled it, with
Edwards unwilling or unable to prevent that. Only dyed-in-the-wool Democrats
and/or liberals in the attentive public would discount the Republicans’
explanation. With the current positioning of things, under this scenario electoral
advantage goes to the GOP and against Edwards’ reelection chances.
So, the moment of truth rapidly approaches for
Edwards. Unless he can detach enough Republicans – and some in-name-only like
state Rep. Rob
Shadoin would
defect if they sense it politically feasible – to ram through permanent tax
increases, if he fails to rein in leftist legislators that almost certainly will
cost him a second term.
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