A panel of educators, policy wonks, students and others suggests that both businesses and individuals must feel the pain of tax increases if the state expects to get itself out of its fiscal mess, the Manship School News Service reports.
Their discussion took place Monday evening at a session called “Solve the Budget,” part of a series of events sponsored by the LSU Manship School’s Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs and WWNO New Orleans Public Radio leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
Though the LSU panel reached a conclusion, the Legislature wasn’t so successful in its deliberations Monday evening. The special session adjourns at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
House Republicans refused to move substantial additional revenue raising measures to the Senate, apparently answering Gov. John Bel Edwards’ requests to raise taxes on corporations.
What the House is focusing on as a way out of the financial mess is an increase sales tax rates, perhaps as much as 50%, for individuals. Meanwhile, Democrats say such an increase would impact the poor the most. The proposal, though, has the support of businesses.
The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state’s largest and most powerful business lobby, has made it clear it would not support a sales tax increase if business utilities and purchase of machinery were included.
After lengthy closed-door negotiations with the governor and a political checkmate nowhere in sight, the House adjourned Monday night with only a couple of hours to spare on its third-to-last day of the special session.
Back at LSU, panelists Louisiana Budget Project Director Jan Moller and Jim Richardson, an LSU Business School professor and chairman of the state Revenue Estimating Conference, emphasized that the state has run out of one-time solutions to fiscal deficits, leaving the legislature with its current task to solve the largest financial crisis in 30 years.
“Rahm Emanuel had a great saying: Never let a good crisis go to waste. It looks like the Legislature is going to let a good crisis go to waste,” said Moller, whose organization advocates for low- to moderate-income families. “I would be very surprised if you saw next year’s budget gap solved.”
