There are a couple of legitimate issues on which conservative voters can disagree with Gov. John Bel Edwards. His support of teachers’ unions, perhaps, or his chumminess with the trial bar.
But to try to make an economic argument against the governor, whose fiscal restraint and political pragmatism bailed Louisiana out of a deep hole and set it on a sustainable path for the first time since, maybe, Gov. Mike Foster’s administration, is simply untrue, writes Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column.
Riegel urges voters not to put fealty to a political party over logic, because, when it comes to Louisiana’s finances, we’re doing better now than we were four years ago under Bobby Jindal.
Edwards’ opponents have repeatedly made claims about his expansion of government, with blind disregard for the facts and convenient amnesia of the fiscal mess he inherited from his Republican predecessor.
The truth is that in four years under Edwards, the state general fund budget did grow, yes. However, growth on the spending side was driven by long-overdue pay raises for teachers and state workers, and investments in higher education, the latter of which received a much-needed infusion of $47 million earlier this year.
The state general fund budget—what people generally care about because that’s the part funded by our tax dollars—is a little less than one-third of the roughly $30 billion overall operating budget, which Edwards is also accused of bloating, largely because he expanded Medicaid.
But that’s another fallacious argument. Under Obamacare, the federal government agreed to pick up 100% of the tab for the first several years of Medicaid expansion, and today still pays for roughly 90% of it.
There will be much well-funded disinformation in the weeks to come as Louisiana barrels toward the runoff election, be careful not to buy in, Riegel writes.
Read her full column, where she goes deeper into the state of Louisiana’s finances here. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
