Paying attention to shortfalls in office
This week our governor, the honorable Bobby Jindal, is expected to announce his presidential ambitions to the nation. In a perfect world, the national press would join Louisiana’s media and a few news outlets outside Louisiana in skewering Jindal for his recent chicanery in “achieving” a 2016 balanced state budget absent tax increases – all in the face of a $1.6 billion budget shortfall. Obviously, we don’t live in a perfect world, but here’s hoping that few headlines appearing in media outside the state will grow legs.
From Slate: “Bobby Jindal Found a Mind-Bendingly Stupid Way to Pretend He Isn’t Raising Taxes.”
From Salon: “Bobby Jindal’s dishonest scheme: Even fellow Republicans are embarrassed by this one.”
And inside the state: The Time- Picayune’s “‘Is it the SAVE bill or the dumb bill?’ Legislators look to change the name of Bobby Jindal’s ‘no tax’ legislation.”
By now the infamous “SAVE” legislation probably doesn’t need explaining, but it sure deserves more discussion. In order to plug that breathtaking $1.6 billion budget hole, lawmakers and the governor ginned up about $350 million in new revenues, largely through taxes on businesses and an increase in the tobacco tax. Unfortunately for the governor, he had signed Grover Norquist’s (Americans for Tax Reform or ARM) pledge to forego raising taxes. So there had to be an offset, regardless of how perfectly meaningless it might be.
Ergo SAVE or “Student Assessment for a Valuable Education.” Perhaps best explained by the Baton Rouge Advocate, SAVE “would assess a fee of about $1,500 per higher education student and raise about $350 million total, but only on paper. Students wouldn’t have to pay anything because of an offsetting tax credit for the $1,500. Nor would universities receive any new money. However, the SAVE fund would create a tax credit for the $350 million that Jindal could use to offset the $350 million of new revenue that legislators are proposing to raise.”
So the governor bases a critical state budget on cheap subterfuge to keep a promise to a guy who doesn’t live in Louisiana and has not the first interest in seeing Louisiana find its way out of a budgetary black hole?
And Jindal wants to run the country? If that doesn’t scare you, you have not been paying attention.
Scam-making is not a gubernatorial asset, and most certainly not presidential résumé material.
And what’s more disturbing, in fact outright lock-your-jaw insulting, is that a majority of the Louisiana Legislature went along with this scam.
A majority of the Legislature decided that instead of telling the truth about this scam, opposing it and demonstrating what the checks and balances of government really means – they chose the low road of complicity with the governor’s duplicity.
Fortunately not all lawmakers were of that ilk; according to the Baton Rouge Advocate’s Stephanie Grace, state Sen. John Bel Edwards was outspoken in his criticism of and opposition to Jindal’s exclusively self-serving motive to play loose and free with Louisiana’s fiscal state. According to Grace’s article, Edwards, a Democrat who’s running for governor this fall, said, “This scheme does not add a single red penny to higher education … this is the least anti-tax ploy I have ever seen in my life. The most liberal tax-and-spend person would never be able to come up with this, because they’re not imaginative enough.” Edwards, a former Army Ranger, may have a different concept of integrity than was present generally in Baton Rouge earlier this month.
In the long run, most people campaigned for election to their respective legislative seats promised constituents honest, transparent, responsible and integrity-driven representation. In this case, that might very well have meant a veto-override session that allowed that honesty and transparency in crafting the state’s 2016 budget. And that’s particularly important when just a few days after the session ended it became clear the state likely expects another billion-dollar shortfall next year.
Instead we witnessed precisely the opposite. Louisiana lawmakers and Jindal raised taxes, plain and simple – to balance the budget, and there really wasn’t any other way to do it.
In addition to Jindal likely looking at a presidential run, a sizable number of state lawmakers are looking to retain their seats in the Legislature.
The big question for voters is whether these have demonstrated enough reason to be rehired.
Marty Carlson, a freelance writer, has been covering local news for the past 17 years. She can be reached via email at martycarlson1218@ gmail.com.
