Disappointed Dad spares the rod

John Bel is running out of opportunities to bring his runaway legislature to heel. Here is one more.

Gov. John Bel Edwards is facing the first of several key decisions centered on a single question: Should he try to gain more leverage over the Legislature by selectively punishing several of the lawmakers who thwarted his initiatives on the budget and taxes this year?

The governor will have the opportunity to strike at those he labels “obstructionists” when he decides this week whether to veto any projects in House Bill 2, which lists all of the infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, sidewalks, sewer systems and the like — scheduled to receive state construction dollars for the new budget year that begins on July 1.

Stephanie Grace has often likened the Governor's demeanor at the end of a session to that of a "disappointed dad." Here is Kathleen Blanco with some parenting advice.

“You don’t reward your children when they have defied you,” said Blanco, who is a mother of six. “You reward them when they have behaved appropriately. Of course, legislators aren’t children, but the principles are the same.”

She sounds so confident that legislators aren't children. That's different. Anyway he's probably going to pass on this advice. We read here, in fact, that the governor's strategy for "fiscal cliff" negotiations appears to be let's  just leave it all up to the kids.

Citing a heap of stalled tax bills, Edwards suggests the special session on taxes that he and other legislative leaders have said was inevitable to close that gap might not happen after all, unless he can get House buy-in for a tax plan.

"I will be looking for leadership in the House of Representatives to tell me that there is a plan that they're going to push toward. If there is not, why would we come back and do what we just did at the cost of $60,000 a day?" Edwards said.

That's probably not going to work. From everything we've seen so far, these children need boundaries. Instead,  by allowing the possibility of fiscal meltdown, John Bel appears to be giving them more of what they want. And if he doesn't do anything to ensure that they feel the consequences of their own actions in their own districts,  he's only going to spoil them further.