How to balance budget without new taxes
http://theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/neworleansnews/14709268-123/jeff-sadow-how-to-balance-budget-without-new-taxes
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28.1.16
Details good, overall bad in higher education report
Because it ignored the elephant in
the room, the higher
education transition team report prepared at the behest of Gov. John Bel Edwards
makes it irrelevant to any serious discussion about long-term policy in that
area.
Much of the minutiae within in made
sense. It discussed the mediocrity supported by the Taylor Opportunity Program
for Students, and recommended either raising its standards or capping award amounts,
the latter an approach sent to former Gov. Bobby
Jindal’s desk that
he vetoed. It asks to continue building upon former Jindal and Department
of Education initiatives to reduce bureaucratic impediments and to align better
educational delivery with state needs. It recommends targeting resources to
areas of excellence, champions bureaucratic realignments to promote efficiency
and better delivery, and advocates helping institutions realize more self-generated
revenues from their intellectual products and activities. Tactically, it makes
many sound and few unsound points.
But it has two fatal flaws strategically
that almost entirely moot its salutary aspects. First, it remains captive to
the illusory notion that reductions in state funding act as a “disinvestment”
into higher education. Factually
speaking, the trend of the last several years where fewer state dollars went
into higher education replaced mostly by self-generated revenues (mostly
tuition and fees) better represents an overdue rebalancing that formerly
underpriced higher education to its consumers and demanded over-subsidization
by taxpayers that has left the higher education spending only around $40
million fewer a year than when Jindal took office (although with inflation
factored in the decline reaches 13 percent).
27.1.16
Kennedy's running puts him at front of Senate field
The entrance of Republican
Treasurer John Kennedy into the
Senate contest this fall changes everything about that race.
It also elicits a sigh of relief
from Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards. Kennedy would have posed the strongest challenger to an
Edwards reelection, and probably would have defeated the incumbent had the
election occurred to day. The treasurer winning the Senate obviously removes
that threat, which would be reduced by his running and failing to win it, so
now Edwards is a happy camper as a result of Kennedy’s choice. Kennedy likely headed
in this direction spurred by his two past failures to snare the office (the
first time as a Democrat) and at age 64 he would have to wait three more years
to run for governor while not getting any younger.
His entrance makes him the best
option at present for Democrats, who do not yet have a declared candidate. Of
the Republicans running, only Anh “Joseph” Cao has the potential to have
prompted significant crossover voting from Democrats, and, given the vast gulf
in experience and publicity that Kennedy has earned over his 17 years as
Treasurer and from that perch sniping at existing policy-makers for what he
sees as a lack of fiscal probity, Cao as a Republican alternative for Democrats
shrivels into insignificance. Kennedy would steal votes from any moderate
Democrat that dares to run (the only Democrat name mentioned that comes
close to this near-mythical creature is state Sen. Gary Smith), pushing into mathematically
impossible territory the chance of such a candidate winning a seat.
26.1.16
Democrats drawing wrong lessons from Edwards win
It looks as if Louisiana Democrats
may have learned the wrong lesson from the upset win last year by Gov. John Bel Edwards
from the names
popping up as potential Senate candidates this year.
Edwards won
on a fluke. He chose to compete for a statewide office more insulated from
the national politics of the Pres. Barack Obama
era that unapologetically illuminate Democrats as representatives from a party
well out of the mainstream, with an electorate tilted more to Democrat
candidates, and a race that attracted Republican candidates who put personal
ambition ahead of supporting the right agenda for the state that led them to
sabotage out of spite the one among them that received the most votes.
Do not bet on that combination
happening for the Senate contest. With any Democrat running for office more
easily tied to the party’s extremism and an electorate more favorable to
Republicans than for state offices, any Democrat to have even a ghost of a
chance must have centrist views – especially in that none of the Republicans
running have built up the fear and loathing many in the GOP had for Sen. David Vitter, defeated by
Edwards in a runoff. It seems unlikely that they will repeat the circular
firing squad of last year that left out Edwards, who as a result of that
sideshow managed in enough voters’ minds to separate his very liberal voting
record from an image of himself built on God and guns.
25.1.16
Policy-makers increase size of pension time bomb
The clock keeps ticking, but the
mentality that has produced one of the nation’s largest unfunded accrued
liabilities in Louisiana continues, increasing the chances for a rude blast going off
in 2029.
That’s when the conditions of Art. X, Sec. 29 of
the Constitution come into play, which mean that the 13 state and statewide
retirement systems must not be actuarially under-funded – that is, the systems
each must have enough money on hand to pay for all forecast retirement benefits
of their present members and retirees – by an amount generated prior to fiscal
year 1989. At present, in the aggregate these have only about 60 percent of
that money available, with around nine-tenths of the unfunded accrued liability
of roughly $20 billion coming from the Teachers
Retirement System of Louisiana and the Louisiana State Employees Retirement System
(any subsequent UAL also has statutory limits on reductions for each system in
a relatively smaller aggregate amount, with 2038 as the last-established
deadline among these).
Because of the imperative, each
year the state must pay extra – beyond the statutory limits required for each
plan in each system – into pensions to make up for this UAL. That adds up to
around $1.5
billion extra footed by taxpayers annually just for these two systems,
which includes any local taxes paid as well concerning TRSL as about 90 percent
of its members fall under school district jurisdiction, with the remainder
under state jurisdiction covering higher education employees (not part of the
optional retirement plan) and directly state-run elementary and secondary
school employees.
23.1.16
The Advocate column, Jan. 24, 2016
John Bel Edwards governorship off to a rocky start
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/14641197-123/jeff-sadow-new-governor-off-to-a-rocky-start
Links:
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/14641197-123/jeff-sadow-new-governor-off-to-a-rocky-start
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21.1.16
Letter distorts truth concerning nursing home largesse
When you’re making over
$250,000 a year, you’re going to try to make it appear that policy that
benefits members of the organization paying you looks good, even if you have to
distort and falsify the truth as Louisiana Nursing Home Association executive
director Joe Donchess did recently in a letter
to The Advocate about a column
of mine.
Part of the piece pointed out the
privileged status of nursing homes in Louisiana and how that would impact
Medicaid spending in light of Gov. John Bel Edwards’
declaration to expand Medicaid. It noted:
A constitutional amendment passed
in 2014, for which Edwards voted as a legislator, exacerbates the looming
crisis. That change essentially locked in the reimbursement rate for
privately-operated nursing homes, adjustable upwards by inflation, despite
Louisiana’s institutions having among the lowest occupancy rates of the states.
Worse, the formula used pushed up the rate artificially by including
non-Medicaid patients and also pays operators over $15 million annually for empty
beds due to over-capacity ….
20.1.16
Edwards includes needless tax hikes in deficit plan
Almost three years ago he railed
against a plan that would have given Louisiana in the aggregate the highest
sales tax in the country. During his run for governor, he said he would not
raise taxes and decried the use of “one-time” money to balance budgets.
Yesterday, Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards,
eight days into office, declared he wanted to do all of the above to address this fiscal year's predicted budget deficit.
Of course, Edwards
disclaimed all responsibility for the about-face in his economic policy,
alleging that he had not known of the mounting difficulties with the fiscal
year 2016 budget, which his administration now asserts to be $750 million in
the red. Never mind that as a legislator Edwards had access to all of this
information, which comes to the Legislature on a monthly basis, that should not
have made for any surprise of an escalating deficit and leaving plenty of time
to start planning.
Naturally, as part of that he
indicated the real responsibility for this lay with his predecessor former Gov.
Bobby
Jindal. He contended that Jindal’s budgeting tactics – which he ratified
five out of eight times as a legislator – brought matters to this head,
implying he bore no blame for whatever he suggested. He then laid out a plan
that, at the very least by its verisimilitude to Jindal’s budgeting, makes them
kissing cousins.
19.1.16
Unserious fiscal paper puts agenda before value
Just as inevitably the first
couple of transition team reports for Gov. John Bel Edwards
looked to lead the coming bunch in sensibility, when it showed up the one
concerning fiscal matters kept its promise as the least serious of all to
come.
You know when a document thanks
several organizations and individuals for expertise in its report and singles
out by name, among the government agencies and interest groups and academicians, the
rancher, mega-landowner and royalty recipient, and insurance agent Public
Service Commissioner Foster
Campbell, that the proposal has diluted its gravity with politics and
ideology. Campbell, who has no expertise in economics or fiscal matters but who
led the group as a co-chairman, likely got the mention because of his herpetic
pushing over the decades of the tired and discredited
notion of an oil processing tax to replace the severance tax that therefore
naturally had to find its way into the document.
The facile
populist belief behind it maintains that some alleged surplus profits of
oil companies plus the 98.5 percent of the country that resides outside of the
state would pay for it, forgetting that state concerns consume a much higher
proportion – at least 28 percent – of the processing maximum and that the tax
gets passed along to consumers. That such a measure would go into effect in era
with low worldwide prices putting on the ropes the industry in Louisiana and,
as a result of the soft market, excess refining capacity brimming outside the
state makes it not just a stupid idea, but absurdly so.
18.1.16
Preposterous Obamacare speculation flees reality
Sometimes the media go with a story
just so far detached from reality, one must marvel at their obliviousness.
Louisiana readers received one such treat last week after Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards unwisely
decided to expand Medicaid.
Just after that happened, Pres. Barack Obama
visited the state and there proclaimed that he would authorize the period in
which the federal government picks up all reimbursement costs of expansion
(Louisiana still will have to fork over several million dollars extra the first
half of the next fiscal year to cover administrative costs) to the first three
years of it for a state, not in the 2014-2016 period as the law reads. As it
currently stands, Louisiana would receive total reimbursement for care costs only
during the first six months of its next fiscal year.
Keep in mind that Obama typically operates
in a dictatorial mode whenever Congress insists on following the Constitution
in its power to make law by refusing to pass Obama’s requests; he responds by issuing
extra-constitutional executive orders and signing statements to attempt to
bypass the rules by which this representative democracy exists, so he has
gotten into the habit of saying he will make things happen that constitutionally
he cannot. The fact is, he can promise only to put this idea into the budget
for the Republican-led Congress to do with it whatever it sees fit.
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