Welcome to the norm in Louisiana U.S. Senate
elections as the state transitions fully into Republican majority-party rule.
This week, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy announced his
entirely expected reelection bid for this fall. So far, he has but one
announced opponent, a Democrat with little name recognition and few resources.
Possibly a bigger name among Democrats could
enter, but even among the party’s most prominent politicians none likely could
come within 10 points of Cassidy in the general election. Simply and especially
because national issues come into play in consideration of this seat, no state
Democrat is close enough to the median center-right voter in Louisiana on the
entire scope of issues to triumph against a solid conservative like Cassidy (American
Conservative Union rating voting score: 83).
There’s no reason to oppose having Louisiana joining
the 16 states at present that allow carrying of concealed
handguns without having to go through a permitting process.
HB 72 by
Republican state Rep. Danny McCormick
would eliminate the need to qualify and pay for costs associated with a permit,
making where allowed by law concealed carry legal for any legal state resident with
a handgun legally obtained unless they don’t meet a long list of conditions
associated with prior criminal behavior, mental instability, certain discharges
from the armed forces, or drug use, or who have violated federal guns laws. It
would eliminate the education requirement or a display of firearm competency,
or an application statement
vouching that training has occurred and that the applicant is not ineligible for
the permit by virtue of one of the legally disqualifying conditions..
McCormick calls the fees connected with obtaining
an existing permit a tax triggered merely by concealing the weapon. If carried
openly, no permit or fee is necessary. He argues that the state shouldn’t put unnecessary
impediments in the way of exercising a constitutional right.
Earlier this month, Louisiana mainstream media
covered the release
of the state’s faux executive budget by Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards. Lots of surface
details emerged, but they all glossed over, if not missed entirely, the deeper
and more substantive stories.
Primary among these in the pretend budget – a sham
because it contained revenues unrecognized by the state’s panel empowered to do
so, the Revenue Estimating Conference – was without its fake revenue Edwards essentially
couldn’t make any new spending commitments. The reason: Medicaid
expansion expenses are eating the state out of house and home, despite over
$300 million in tax increases for the program Edwards falsely alleged would
save the state money.
Other consequences followed. You couldn’t swing a
dead cat during last year’s gubernatorial campaign without Edwards pledging to
raise salaries for educators, but even with the unauthorized money included his
spending plan had no room for these. With a half-normal-sized increase in the
Minimum Foundation Program Edwards suggested districts individually approve raises
with that bounty.
Some pre-filed bills for the 2020 regular session of
the Louisiana Legislature take the wrong approach to dealing with the state’s
most useless elective office.
Last
year, lawmakers rejected a bill to amend the Constitution to tie the election
of the lieutenant governor to that of the governor. This year, identical bills HB 42 by
Democrat state Rep. Kyle Green and HB 50 by
Republican state Rep. Mark Wright
seek to do the same.
It’s still a bad idea, at two levels. It obscures accountability
for both offices, especially in a blanket primary system that already devalues the
important policy stand-in cue of party identification, by promoting personalistic
and geographic characteristics for both candidates.
One way of looking at the appointment
of Courtney Phillips as the new head of Louisiana’s Department of Health –
which swallows nearly half of all money spent by the state – is that Democrat Gov.
John Bel Edwards
has realized the serious spot into which he has put himself.
Phillips comes from Texas, where she ran an operation
over twice the size of Louisiana’s, and prior to that headed up Nebraska’s
similar agency, which isn’t quite he size of Louisiana’s. However, she spent
many years moving up the ranks at LDH before decamping to Nebraska in 2015, and
headed to Texas in 2018. A Louisiana native with family in the state, she will
take a pay cut when she starts Mar. 13.
Significantly, two conservative Republican
governors appointed Phillips and she loyally carried out policies that reflected
an appreciation for right-sizing government – an attitude foreign to the Edwards
Administration. Both resisted Medicaid expansion (although a majority of Nebraska
voters drank the Flavor Aid and imposed it on the state after she left),
although she took over a similar kind of program for lower-income women for
family planning and health services that Texas instituted.
Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards
said his reelection
would result in continued pay raises for education employees. He also
alleged that Medicaid expansion and criminal justice changes (termed “reinvestment”)
would produce
cost savings for Louisiana. That these claims didn’t pan out explains why
Edwards will keep fighting tooth-and-nail to inflate the state’s fiscal year
2021 budget, the
faux version of which he released last week.
The spending plan put
forward is not
the version required legally because he didn’t use existing revenue
forecasts, including $103 million extra dollars in the general fund forecast as
well as $25 million of individual citizens’ unclaimed assets that follows past
practice now in legal dispute with Republican Treasurer John Schroder. Taking that as it
comes, it calls for $128 million more in new general fund commitments and $285
million across that, federal funds, self-generated revenues and statutory
dedications, and interagency transfers.
Put another way, Edwards wants to increase general
fund spending by nearly 3.5 percent, or half again higher than the 2.3 percent
increase in inflation for 2019. Over the course of his term, such
spending has increased from $9.118 billion to the requested $10.147
billion, or 11.1 percent, while inflation has gone up only
6.8 percent – which doesn’t even include the fact that millions more disappeared
from this budget’s general fund total when reclassified as statutory dedications
that understate the actual increase. Overall spending has risen from $29.589
billion to the projected $32.165 billion, an increase of 8.7 percent.
With Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards suing
Republican Treas. John Schroder, he
managed to validate a lie of his, flub an opportunity to keep a promise, and
speak out of both sides of his mouth.
Edwards’ falsehood involves his suit over
Schroder refusing to allow a funds sweep of unclaimed cash escheated to the
state, an amount from 1973 through fiscal year 2019 totaling $882 million
(another $237 million in unclaimed securities external entities hold and are unaffected
by the suit). This running total moves up and down by tens of millions of
dollars each year as claims are paid and escheats received.
But Treasury coffers actually hold a far smaller amount, thanks largely to the practice of the state taking $635 million over
that span to spend on current operations. Another $50 million over the years
went to administrative costs, and $180 million by separate appropriation authorized
by law went to fund Interstate 49 bonding. Only a $17 million buffer actually
remains, after Schroder rejected a transfer in FY 2018 of $12 million to bump
up cash on hand. This he did when improved dissemination practices caused such
a run that the amount returned to owners exceeded by more than $5 million the escheats
collected, delaying payments.
