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Friday, July 01, 2016

We lost

Pretty good legislative re-cap from NOLA.com's Julia O'Donoghue.  Read the whole thing, but I would just focus in on this one bit. Because if you understand at least this dynamic, you'll have a pretty good handle on everything else that happened. 
WINNER: Households making over $100,000 annually

None of the $1.5 billion raised by the Legislature was related to individual income tax changes. Lawmakers refused to either raise income taxes or reduce income tax breaks -- which tend to affect middle class and wealthier families more than poor people.

Specifically, the Legislature rejected -- multiple times -- a proposal to reduce an income tax break that is mostly used by households earning more than $100,000 annually. The governor pushed hard, but could never get the votes in the House.

LOSER: Poor people

High sales taxes disproportionately affect poor people, and now, Louisiana has the highest average sales tax of any state in the country.

Of the $1.5 billion raised by the Legislature, about two-thirds of it comes from sales tax changes. The Legislature also chose to raise cigarette and alcohol taxes, which also tend to hurt poor people more.
Bobby Jindal left the budget a wreck. It was left to this bunch to find the revenue necessary to clean up the wreck. Not only did they fail to do that, but what little success they had... if you can call it that.. will be paid for out of the pockets of those of us with the least to spare.   We lost this round.  Next year the governor wants to do structural tax reform. We'd better not lose that round too. 

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