Steve Benen at MaddowBlog reports on the effect the Norquist anti-tax pledge is having on one state – Louisiana:
Norquist is an anti-tax crusader who’s convinced all kinds of GOP policymakers to sign something known as “the pledge” – in order to get ahead in their party, Republicans agree in writing never to support raising any tax on anyone by any amount for any reason.
But occasionally, far-right policymakers discover that the mindless, knee-jerk commitment stands in the way of actual governance in the real world. Louisiana’s Republican-dominated state government, for example, is facing an enormous budget crisis, caused in part by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R) tax breaks. Now the state can’t get its fiscal house in order, and as TPM reported, it’s asking Norquist to give Louisiana a break.
Grover Norquist and his Americans For Tax Reform group has been around for just about as long as I can remember (the group was formed in 1985, which somehow doesn’t sound long enough), and Norquist populated the pages of REASON Magazine quite often when I was a regular reader – usually as subject. And he was usually one note. He didn’t seem interested in questions of governance, simply in reducing the tax burden in any way possible, regardless of the consequences.
The results in the Louisiana case are striking:
– a $1.6 billion budget deficit
– inability to conduct Advanced Placement tests in schools next year
– proposed closing of schools and universities
The above courtesy the Times-Picayune of New Orleans. They note the contributors to Louisiana’s problems:
With the exception of his first year in office, 2008, Jindal has constantly faced state financial shortfalls. Of course, falling energy prices certainly haven’t helped recently and account for a large portion — $400 million — of the shortfall.
But tracing the origins of Louisiana’s budget crisis is complicated. Lawmakers and economists agree that Louisiana’s finances face a “structural” budget problem that has nothing to do with the energy market. The state simply isn’t set up to collect enough revenue to cover its expenses, even during oil and natural gas booms.
Here’s what that means.
First, more money than the state could spend
During the last two years of Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration, the state budget reached record heights. In the 2007-2008 fiscal cycle, Louisiana had a spending plan of $28.6 billion. That was a major increase from the year before Hurricane Katrina, when total spending was only $16.5 billion, according to the Louisiana Legislative Fiscal Office. And it’s nearly $3 billion more than the estimates for state spending in the current budget cycle.
“In 2007-2008, we were really rolling in money,” said Jim Richardson, a Louisiana State University economist who sits on a panel that oversees state revenue. …
Lawmakers, governors and the voters have constitutionally shielded large swaths of Louisiana spending. Much of the state’s primary and secondary education funding automatically increases — and can’t be cut — if more students enroll. This past fall, voters adopted ballot measures that make it difficult to cut the Medicaid budget.
There are also tax credits that entitle business and individuals to a portion of the state funding pie, or at least make it likely Louisiana won’t collect as much in revenue. Some have grown astronomically. Most prominent is the film tax credit, which requires the state to reimburse certain film and television production costs. Last year, the state paid out around $250 million in film tax credits alone.
The above lovely article goes into quite a lot of detail concerning how Louisiana has begun to approach the status of laughingstock of the nation.
Now, faced with a shortfall through financial mismanagement, the Republicans, according to Benen, ask for permission from Norquist to roll back tax credits or raise taxes. And didn’t get it.
Gentlemen, it’s called cojones. (Apologies to any ladies in the Louisiana legislature.) And maybe a few have some. The Advocate of New Orleans reprints an AP article from Melinda DeSlatte:
“They’ve used all the smoke that was in the can and all the mirrors that they could buy and now they’re out of tricks. Their solution is to gut higher education like a fish,” said Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy.
But let’s not stop here; speculation on the mindset of Governor Jindal and his fellow Republicans (I’m tempted to call them cultists at this juncture) is interesting as I see this as one of the consequences of team politics, as we’ve previously discussed. When unnaturally strong hierarchical links are forged between the members of a party, and the folks who’ve clambered to the top (using blatant threats to unseat those folks who displease them, in this case) do not have good judgment, this is what happens: poor decisions, rigid ideologies based on the favored myths of those at the top of the heap, and, generally, disaster.
It’s akin to what happens to dictators who think they’ve slipped the surly bonds of societal norms and can do anything their ideology pleases – eventually, they get dumped in prison, and their damned ideology gets dumped in the river. Like this chap.
Perhaps this will be an inflection point for the Republicans – if Louisiana legislators get up on their back legs and reject the rigid ideologies that has inflicted great unhappiness on their state, perhaps they will lead the GOP out of its current Dark Age of ignorance and denial, despite their national prominence, and back into relevance where they might be trusted to govern.
If they do, it might be fun to write every Republican state legislator in all 50 states and ask them to reject any allegiance they might have to that pernicious anti-tax pledge – and see how they reply.
