Dumb fund

This is actually progress

The Senate passed two of those measures Friday, House Bills 449 and 501. Both would give tax breaks to Bell Helicopter in Lafayette and would create the SAVE fund.

First, though, state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, asked her colleagues to strip the SAVE fund from Robideaux’s HB 449.

The SAVE fund “doesn’t do anything because it’s nonsense,” Peterson said. “This is one of the worst bills I’ve seen in my entire career.”

The Legislature is going into its final week and this "nonsense" fund has been reluctantly passed even though everybody hates it. The reason it is progress, though, is last week people were calling it "nonsense on a stick." Somwhere along the line, we managed to take the stick out of it. So congratulations on that.

Anyway, this was cute.

State Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Mandeville, is the reluctant sponsor of the measure as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

“In my eight years here, I’ve had bills that were a lot more fun than this bill,” Donahue told senators, before saying he was pushing the measure to create the tax offsets Jindal needs to avoid vetoing the budget.

Senators rejected Peterson’s effort and approved the bill.

Laughter began to break out from individual senators throughout the chamber. It was prompted by an amendment to the SAVE fund by state Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, that had just popped up on their computer screens.

LaFleur’s amendment proposed that it be renamed the DUMB fund.

“It describes the bill for what it is, dumb,” LaFleur told his colleagues, as they continued to laugh.” I’m just trying to be candid for the public.”

An angry Donahue strode the microphone at the front of the Senate chamber.

“I’m insulted by it,” Donahue said. “This makes a mockery of what we’re doing.”

 Do not make a mockery of the nonsense. You might hurt someone's feelings.