Louisiana rivals Kansas for the title as the state with the most self-inflicted damage from deep budget cuts, writes New York Times columnist and associate editorial page editor David Leonhardt in a new op-ed that quotes LSU Professor Robert Mann in calling Louisiana “a failed state.”
“Until recently, Kansas offered the clearest cautionary tale about deep tax cuts,” Leonhardt writes. “The state’s then-governor, Sam Brownback, promised that the tax cuts he signed in 2012 and 2013 would lead to an economic boom. They didn’t, and Kansas instead had to cut popular programs like education.”
Louisiana is facing a similar fate after a failed special session that prematurely ended Monday. Cuts to education and medical care are likely to follow, with specific targets being programs that cover medically fragile children and TOPS.
Leonhardt pins much of the blame on former Gov. Bobby Jindal—a Republican wunderkind—who cut income taxes and doubled the size of corporate tax breaks, he writes.
“By the end of his two terms, businesses were able to use those breaks to avoid paying about 80 percent of the taxes they would have owed under the official corporate rate,” Leonhardt writes. “At first, Jindal spun a tale about how the tax cuts would lead to an economic boom—but they didn’t, just as they didn’t in Kansas.”
