Not a lot of moral high ground

At the Legislature this year, we're not supposed to have a huge fight over the budget.  Technically it is a fiscal session but, thanks to painful compromises on sales taxes hammered out during last year's many bruisingly stupid special sessions, lawmakers will not have to solve the kind of budgetary shortfall they've faced in recent years.

And yet, the Republicans have contrived a way to argue about the budget anyway.  Because Taylor Barras has refused to accept  Revenue Estimating Conference projections, there is no official number from which to work.   The Govenor has submitted a budget proposal anyway under the assumption that the REC numbers are reliable whether Barras accepts them or not.  But the lack of agreement opens the door for mischief.  And it's an election year so... well... here it comes.

Anyway, since we're going to be arguing over spending anyway, it would be nice for the Governor if he could claim more of the high ground than he has. But when he's still handing out multi-million dollar "incentives" to global corporations, that makes the job all the more difficult.

Louisiana's new deal with CenturyLink offers the company $17.5 million in tax dollars and strips away penalties if it doesn't meet payroll targets in a continuing, decade-old effort to keep one of Louisiana’s two Fortune 500 headquarters in-state through 2025.

Yeesh. Of course it could always be worse. Check out Billy's idea.

The state has long had a close relationship with CenturyLink, which is based in north Louisiana despite having more global employees — 45,000 — than there are residents in all of Monroe. Last year, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser even offered to have CenturyLink sponsor Poverty Point, a deal that would have renamed the historic site Poverty Point, "the World Heritage Site in Louisiana Sponsored by CenturyLink."

And I guess that does strike the right chord for John Bel's reelection campaign. Where do we get our "It could be worse" makes a pretty good bumper stickers?