The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on health care last week shook the nation, but what Congress did the day before rocked Louisiana, for better and worse. On Wednesday, the House and Senate’s agreement on the transportation bill included the RESTORE Act language, which directs 80% of up to $20 billion in oil spill fines against BP to five Gulf states, with Louisiana in line to get the largest share. This time, Congress is doing right by Louisiana from the start, as it did not do in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. If the total fines come in on the high end, the state will have secured the first big chunk of funding for its 50-year, $50 billion coastal restoration plan. Last month, the state Legislature missed an opportunity to act maturely by failing to pass a proposed constitutional amendment to lock in all the fine money for coastal work. But Congress likely will provide adult supervision by attaching coastal strings to those funds. Beyond that, the actual transportation portion of the bill included a bigger-than-usual share of highway funding for Louisiana, along with more money for dredging and maintaining its ports. And Louisiana residents will benefit as much or more than anyone from the five-year extension of the flood insurance program. Our delegation’s success would have been complete had Congress ignored Louisiana for the rest of the day. Instead, it singled out this state’s Medicaid program for an $859 million haircut. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
