Gotta spend money to make money

In addition to just the outright ghoulish nature of drastic cuts to vital health services in order fund TOPS, there's the bald stupidity of ceding the federal dollars that come on top of that.

To fund TOPS and other priorities, it would carve out $235 million from the Louisiana Department of Health budget, and legislators added extra restrictions on what the department can cut. Cuts to the state's public-private safety net hospital contracts would have to be distributed equally, for example.

Most of the money in the state Health Department comes with a corresponding federal match, so LDH Secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee said the real impact to the agency's budget would be closer to $750 million.

Are they that stupid? Not really. More likely, House Republicans know this isn't their problem. "Our budget fixed TOPS.  And hey we never told the Governor to cut health care by almost 3 times the amount we took out. No idea how that happened."

This isn't a responsible state budget. It's a political sabotage act.

Similarly,  there is this.

Louisiana expects to receive $1.6 billion from the federal government to help homeowners recover from the March and August floods of 2016. The Appropriations Committee voted to divert $190 million of this to a flood prevention project.

That could cause problems for the entire recovery package. It would require Louisiana to resubmit its flood recovery plan to the federal government, which might not approve it.

"What's taking the Governor so long to get us our recovery money from the Fed's? We can't abide this kind of incompetence."

Never too early to start thinking about 2019.