“It’s a crying damn shame,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said after the Legislature passed a budget with deep cuts without adding significant taxes to mitigate next year’s $648 million shortfall, The Daily Advertiser reports.
The two-week special session ended by law at midnight Monday amid shouts and boos in the House of Representatives, where members there once again couldn’t agree on the amount of new taxes needed next year. Edwards, a Democrat, blasted the House, especially the GOP leadership.
“I am disappointed in what was just a disaster that played out in the House of Representatives that’s attributed to a minority of House members and leadership that is anything but,” Edwards said. “It’s a sad day for the state of Louisiana.”
House Republicans, on Tuesday, issued a statement countering they were determined to stop “out of control” state spending.
“Louisiana will continue to fall in every conceivable category until someone says ‘enough is enough,’” said the statement. “Last night, Louisiana House Republicans stood up for for the hard-working, overtaxed families of this state and said ‘enough.’”
The budget passed in the final 30 minutes of the session largely spares health care and nursing home patients but gouges the popular scholarship program TOPS, higher education and virtually every other agency in state government.
“We have to do better because this isn’t going to be the budget that carries us into next year,” the governor said.
That means Edwards will call lawmakers into a third special session sometime before the new fiscal year starts on July 1. He hasn’t decided on the specific dates. Edwards vetoed a similar budget that cleared the Regular Session but said he will “look at all my options” before deciding whether to make a second veto or hope lawmakers decide to plug the holes with new taxes.
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