Louisiana, a "failed state"

[Scooter]

Louisiana, ‘a Failed State’

Until recently, Kansas offered the clearest cautionary tale about deep tax cuts. 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.

Now Kansas seems to have a rival for the title of the state that’s caused the most self-inflicted damage through tax cuts: Louisiana.

“No two ways about it: Louisiana is a failed state,” Robert Mann, a Louisiana State University professor and New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist, wrote recently.

A special session of the State Legislature, called specifically to deal with a budget crisis caused by a lack of tax revenue, failed to do so, and legislators adjourned on Monday. No one is sure what will happen next. If legislators can’t agree on tax increases, cuts to education and medical care will likely follow.

The targets would include “health care programs that cover medically fragile children and the developmentally disabled, as well as the popular Taylor Opportunity Program for Students that provides tuition-covering grants for thousands of college students,” as Elizabeth Crisp of The Advocate, the Baton Rouge newspaper, explained.

Louisiana’s former governor, Bobby Jindal, deserves much of the blame. A Republican wunderkind when elected at age 36 in 2008, he cut income taxes and roughly doubled the size of corporate tax breaks. 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.

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. Instead, Louisiana’s state revenue plunged. The tax cuts helped the rich become richer and left the state’s middle class and poor residents with struggling schools, hospitals and other services.

The experiences of Louisiana and Kansas are particularly important because the federal government is running a version of those states’ economic policies. In December, President Trump signed a tax cut skewed overwhelmingly to the rich. Contrary to every independent analysis, he and congressional Republicans justified the plan with claims that it would turbocharge economic growth.

We know how this story will end. When the tax cut fails to produce an economic boom, the middle class and poor will be left to pay the price.

There is still a good solution available to Louisiana, though, and it happens to be the one that Kansas eventually chose: Undo the tax cuts.

Related: If you like interactive graphics, you can come up with your own solution to Louisiana’s budget crisis by choosing among a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. The calculator is a joint project of L.S.U.’s Manship School of Mass Communication, The Knight Foundation and The Advocate, and it was inspired by a federal-budget calculator that The New York Times created in 2010.

[rubato]

Republican economic policies have failed consistently for 30 years. Every prediction they make turns out wrong. When Clinton raised taxes they said that it would discourage high earners and the economy would tank. The opposite happened and Clinton created the largest expansion since the depression and ALL five income quintiles saw huge increases. Bush the Stupider cut taxes and the economy was in a malaise for8 years and then tanked in the worst collapse since the depression. GOP economics are stupid. They don't work. They have never worked.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la ... story.html

Kansas' tax cuts are a spectacular failure. Meanwhile, in California ...
By Tom Steyer
Jun 22, 2017 | 4:00 AM

Kansas state lawmakers voted to override Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's veto and demolish his signature tax plan. (June 8, 2017)(Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

Republican legislators in Kansas did the unthinkable this month: They voted to raise income taxes, ending a painful five-year experiment with an extreme anti-tax agenda introduced by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. The Republican-held Legislature had to override a veto by the governor to pass the emergency tax increase, now crucial to prevent deep budget cuts for schools and other essential public services.

Kansas embarked on its trickle-down experiment in 2012. Brownback slashed taxes across the board, calling his plan “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.” Five years later, the state’s economy is on life support, and government expenses are expected to outpace income by $1.1 billion through June 2019. Instead of a poster child for the small-government theories championed by economist Arthur Laffer, tax reform activist Grover Norquist and the rest of the Republican Party, Kansas has become a cautionary tale about what happens when you expose their economic ideas to sunlight.

Meanwhile, a state that Republicans love to mock – California – has done just the opposite. In November of 2012, the same year Kansas plunged into its tax-slashing experiment, more than 54% of California voters approved Proposition 30, a measure that temporarily raised income taxes for the state's wealthiest residents and increased the sales tax in order to fund schools and pay down debt. The tax hikes helped California erase $27 billion in debt, and the state has since enjoyed some of the strongest economic growth in the country. (Of course that growth isn't due to tax hikes alone; the state has a robust tech sector, among other factors.)

If states can indeed serve as laboratories of democracy, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis suggested, there's no question which state embarked on the more successful test.

Why do Republicans want to replicate Kansas’ failure on a national scale?
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Brownback was elected in 2010 on the usual Republican promises to slash taxes and boost growth. Though Kansas' income tax rates were already low, Brownback cut them further. Along with the Republican Legislature, he also got rid of taxes for most owner-operated businesses. These steep reductions were accompanied by cruel cuts to public services that hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.

Predictably, wealthy corporate interests such as the Wichita-based Koch Industries – one of Brownback's largest campaign donors – did fine under this scheme, while working families took a beating. In time, Kansas' budget tanked, funding for higher education was slashed, businesses began to flee the state, and Brownback earned the distinction of "most unpopular governor in America." (He has since lost the title to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.)

As Brownback was instituting his signature tax cuts, Republicans and conservative media organs were savagely attacking Proposition 30 and predicting imminent doom for California if it passed. Instead, California’s job growth has consistently outpaced that of other states, its credit outlook rating has been repeatedly upgraded, and funding for the state’s schools has increased. Voters liked all this fiscal stability so much that, last year, they voted to extend some of the taxes. Over the same period, Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators have enjoyed record-high poll numbers.

Brown put California back on track with tax increases, in other words, while Brownback's "real live experiment" with unprecedented tax cuts knocked Kansas off the rails. And how does the Republican Party respond to this massive failure? By doubling down on their destructive obsession with tax giveaways for the wealthy, of course. President Trump's tax plan is modeled on the Kansas experiment – and Republicans in Congress can't wait to enact it.

Why do Republicans want to replicate Kansas' failure on a national scale? There's the rub. If your goal is to enrich billionaires and millionaires in the short-term, Kansas is not a failure. If your metric of success is whether taxes are decreased for the rich, Kansas is a big success.

The Republicans' zeal to duplicate the Kansas disaster for the whole country proves that they'll stop at nothing to stack wealth and power in the hands of the few. They'll take healthcare away from millions of Americans. They'll even drive the economy off a cliff.

The Kansas experiment is a failure only if you care about what happens to American workers and their families. Clearly, Republicans don't.

Tom Steyer is president of the environmental advocacy organization NextGen Climate.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinio ... 226757.php

[Econoline]

I'm sure you'll notice something else they all have in common...

[liberty]

We need more taxes or revenue of some kind. As far as I am concerned the state can open a string of state own whore houses. At onetime and it still might be the case in North Caroline the state owned liquor stores. If there is to be sin at least the state should gain from it.

I am not rich but I willing to pay more taxes.

[dales]

Send it all here, Lib:

617 North Third Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802

[Bicycle Bill]

As far as I am concerned the state can open a string of state own whore houses.

Spoken like a good little Republican horndog.  Maybe you'd like to open a couple of state-run crack houses or opium dens across the street from them while you're at it?

If there is to be sin at least the state should gain from it.

Lying is a sin, too.  Charge Trump for every lie, falsehood, half-truth, scurrilous innuendo, or bit of 'fake news' he spouts and we could retire the national debt.

-"BB"-

[ex-khobar Andy]

As far as I am concerned the state can open a string of state own whore houses.

]

Actually I am surprised that liberty likes tax-favored competition. The Republican mantra is that the state should not jump in where private enterprise can fill the demand.

[liberty]

As far as I am concerned the state can open a string of state own whore houses.

]

Actually I am surprised that liberty likes tax-favored competition. The Republican mantra is that the state should not jump in where private enterprise can fill the demand.

Well, there is a good reason for that I am not a Republican or conservative. We have considered changing parties, but we have not done it yet. We don’t feel comfortable in a party that has brown shirts so we might switch to the Republicans. I am a moderate Democrat at the moment, an almost extent animal. There is no room in the Democrat party for the likes of Scoop Jackson anymore. I am a moderate Democrat but I consider myself more of a pragmatist than anything else.
I see nothing wrong with the state government making money from a business or some other enterprise. The comment about whore houses was sarcasm born of frustration. But, I am almost to the point I would accept just about anything that made money for the state.

We, the state, waste a lot of money too but that is another story.

[Scooter]

We don’t feel comfortable in a party that has brown shirts wears white sheets so we might switch to the Republicans.

FTFY

[rubato]

California uses this thing called "taxes" to raise money.

Yrs,
Rubato