Debunking Gov. Bel’s $600M savings claim

Good read. LINK

In a nutshell, after being elected on the promise of no new taxes, Bel Honor Code claimed surprise over learning of a huge budgetary shortfall...

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It was doubly surprising because he had been integrally involved in the passage of Governor Jindal’s budgets, thus he had intimate knowledge of the fine details contained in those budgets. He even voted for all but one of them. Now one could conjecture that his campaign promise was phony, but that is not the issue here.

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In addition to other misrepresentations, Bel HC fought for $1 billion in taxes, which the legislature repeatedly refused, leading Bel to threaten to shut down LSU football and sent letters to old folks threatening them with eviction.

The legislature finally balanced the budget with a seven-year tax increase of 0.445 cents or just over $400 million.

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No, the governor did not reduce taxes by $600 million. The truth is if he had gotten his way taxes would currently be increased unnecessarily by over $1 billion per year. So now the irony is he is claiming that he created a tax cut when actually he was forced to accept far less than he demanded of the legislature.

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Also telling,

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According to the House Fiscal Office, during the last budget year of Governor Jindal, the state’s effort toward the total means of finance (all of the revenue derived directly from all state sources including business and personal taxpayers without any Federal funds) was $14.1 billion. The current state effort following Governor Edwards’ first three years in office is now $19.84 billion. That’s an increase per year of about $6 billion more of in-state derived funds being spent than when Governor Jindal was in office.

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