Time is growing short today for Louisiana lawmakers to strike a deal on next year’s $24 billion budget and the tax plans that will finance it. Work in the 60-day regular legislative session must end by 6 p.m.
As The Associated Press reports, House and Senate leaders are trying to reach an agreement on how to raise taxes, shrink tax breaks and scale back business subsidies as a way to drum up hundreds of millions of dollars for the budget. The money would stop deep cuts to colleges and public health services.
Lawmakers are also haggling over whether to meet Gov. Bobby Jindal’s criteria for the tax changes he’ll consider. If they don’t, they risk a veto of some of the tax bills that would pay for the spending plans in the budget.
Jindal, who is expected to announce his presidential campaign in two weeks, is threatening to veto bills he considers a net tax increase unless lawmakers find a way to offset them with what he considers a tax cut. He’s closely guarded his record on a no-tax pledge he signed with an organization led by national anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.
The Senate has agreed to create a tax credit—only on paper—that would satisfy Jindal’s terms. But so far, House members have balked. They insist that concept deceives the public and is designed solely to benefit the Republican governor’s White House ambitions.
If the governor gets his wish on a budget deal, it will be a rare victory in a legislative session that has shot down two of the centerpieces of his agenda. Lawmakers rejected Jindal’s push to give special protections in state law to people who oppose same-sex marriage, killing the bill after its first hearing.
They also refused the governor’s effort to strip the Common Core education standards from Louisiana’s public school classrooms. Instead, they ended the legislative controversy with a compromise that leaves much of the long-term decision-making on standards to the state’s next governor and state school board members elected this fall.
By this morning, lawmakers had cleared away nearly everything not connected to finances, leaving the final day’s focus the same as when the session started: how to close Louisiana’s $1.6 billion budget gap in the fiscal year that begins July 1.
