Amendment 2 is ‘foolish’

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell is speaking out against a complex and misleading amendment on the March 29 statewide ballot. Amendment 2 would, among other things, eliminate state trust funds that support education programs and use those dollars to replace annual stipends that teachers have received from the state the past two years. Teachers’ overall take-home pay will not change. KTAL’s Isabella Cheng explains why Campbell feels Amendment 2 is ‘foolish.’

Additionally, Campbell states, “During my 27-year Senate tenure, I recognized the challenges faced by our teachers and voted for every teacher pay raise. Our teachers today need better pay, but it is foolish to fund raises by destroying a savings account that yields continuing benefits each year for school children in our public and private schools.” He ends the news release telling voters, “Don’t fool with a good thing.” 

Invest in Louisiana’s Jan Moller sat down with WRKF’s Jim Engster on Tuesday to discuss the pitfalls of Amendment 2. Listen here.

Medicaid and SNAP cuts would devastate state economies

A proposed Republican budget reconciliation would cut $880 billion from Medicaid and $230 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps, over the next decade. A new report from The Commonwealth Fund explains how these moves would lead to massive job loss and declines in economic activity and state tax revenue. 

Combined losses from proposed Medicaid and SNAP cuts would reach $1.1 trillion over a decade, including a $95 billion loss of federal funding in 2026 alone. State gross domestic products (GDPs) would be $113 billion lower, exceeding federal budget savings. About 1.03 million jobs would be lost nationwide in health care, food-related industries, and other sectors. State and local governments would lose $8.8 billion in state and local tax revenues. Not extending the enhanced health insurance premium tax credits that are scheduled to expire after December 2025 would lead to an additional 286,000 jobs lost in 2026, for a combined total of more than 1.3 million jobs lost in the United States.

Going backwards on students seeking college aid

Seven years ago, Louisiana became a national model by becoming the first state to require all high school students to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) before graduating. But last year state leaders scrapped that successful policy. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Patrick Wall reports on the consequences of that decision:

The number of Louisiana students who have submitted the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, this school year is down 12% compared with the same period last year, according to federal data compiled by the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN. By contrast, applications are up 14% nationwide, and every state except Louisiana has seen a year-over-year increase. … Students have until June 30 to apply. But with an estimated 37% of seniors completing the FAFSA so far, Louisiana has fallen from 5th place nationally last year to 29th place, according to NCAN.

Wall reports on the benefits of the terminated policy: 

The policy also appeared to steer more students to college. In Louisiana’s Class of 2018, about 7,000 more students received federal Pell grants and nearly 1,500 more enrolled in college than would be expected based on national trends, according to a study by researchers at The Century Foundation, a liberal policy think tank. The requirement also closed the application gap between poorer and wealthier districts by getting more low-income students to fill out the form, the researchers found.

Food assistance programs under attack

The Trump administration has frozen $500 million in food shipments to food banks. The move comes after President Trump terminated two Biden-era policies that paid farmers to provide fresh and minimally processed foods to schools and food banks.The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian and Jesus Jiménez report on the broad attack on food assistance: 

Food bank directors fear that an across-the-board contraction to federal food assistance could drive more people to food banks just as they are losing access to critical supplementary funds. “This is perhaps the first moment in the history of food banking that we have seen record low unemployment and record high demand at food banks,” [Feeding America’s Vince] Hall said. 

The effects are already being felt locally, as six truckloads of canned food bound for the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank were recently canceled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Advocate’s Ellyn Couvillion reports: 

The food bank relies on the USDA for a lot of the groceries it distributes, and, while the six deliveries were bonus shipments delivered outside of the bank’s typical allocations, their absence did not go unnoticed, Mike Manning, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank, said Thursday.

Number of the Day

58% – Percentage of U.S. adults who say tax rates on household income over $400,000 should be raised. (Source: Pew Research Center)