Who would pay for Landry’s tax cuts?

Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration is coalescing around a ‘plan’ that would reduce taxes – and the revenue they generate – even as the state faces a half-billion dollar budget shortfall. The impending fiscal cliff is due to temporary taxes that are already scheduled to expire in July 2025. Revenue Secretary Richard Nelson is proposing across-the-board income tax cuts for people and corporations and the elimination of the corporate franchise tax, but he has offered few details on how the state would make up the resulting loss of tax revenue. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Tyler Bridges reports: 

If everyone receives a tax cut — and who doesn’t want one? — how will the state government, with less money available, continue to pay for the services that people expect? That question is especially relevant because lawmakers are facing a $600 million to $800 million shortfall in spending next year, in part because a temporary .45-cent sales tax is scheduled to expire on June 30. … “The state has to balance the budget, unlike Washington, where tax cuts can be paid for down the line or paid for with a credit card,” [Invest in Louisiana’s Jan Moller] said.

In Louisiana, teachers are paid below their regional peers, infrastructure is dilapidated and crumbling and 1 in 4 children grow up in poverty. But the Landry administration believes ‘belt-tightening’ is the best way to move our state forward: 

Nelson noted that Landry and Republicans who hold a majority in the House and Senate believe that state government spending grew unnecessarily under Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, which would mean they can approve a flat tax plan that raises less money than the current system without hurting the public. “The Legislature would like to see some belt-tightening from the agencies,” Nelson said.

Teacher pay penalty reaches record high

The gap between the weekly wages of teachers and college graduates working in other professions grew to a record high of 26.6% last year, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. This wage gap, known as the teacher pay penalty, saw teachers earn, on average, 73.4 cents for every dollar made by other college grads. While teachers often receive better benefits than their counterparts, it’s still not enough to make up for the lower pay. The report’s authors lay out why this matters:

It is hard to think of a more consequential profession than teaching. Teachers have the future of the country in front of them daily. The quality of a public education greatly hinges on our efforts to take care of the teaching workforce and sufficiently fund schools. Too often and in too many places, we are failing to attain one of our highest ideals as a nation: our promise to educate every child without regard to means. This is a question of political will, with profound implications for our children, their families and communities, and the future of our nation.

Louisiana teachers earn 27% less than their similarly educated counterparts in other professions. 

Trump’s tax pandering

Neither former President Donald Trump’s nor Vice President Kamala Harris’ tax plans would tackle the ballooning federal deficit. A recent analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget model shows Trump’s plan would add $5.8 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, while Harris’ would add $1.2 trillion. But as the Washington Post Editorial Board notes, the levels of irresponsibility are not the same: 

The most irresponsible is Donald Trump, whose latest gimmick — at a campaign event in Arizona on Thursday — was proposing to eliminate taxes on overtime pay for workers toiling more than 40 hours a week, at a cost of $227 billion, the Tax Foundation finds. For the elderly, he has offered to stop taxing social security benefits, which would disproportionately benefit upper-income households and, according to the Tax Foundation, raise the budget deficit by about $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He also promised to extend his 2017 tax cuts — which would cost $4 trillion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office — and trim the corporate tax rate again, from 21 percent to (depending on the day) 20 percent or 15 percent.

Made up problem could cause government shutdown

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence that people prove their citizenship when registering to vote could lead to a government shutdown. Noncitizens are already barred from voting in federal elections, but Donald Trump has promoted conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants interfering with U.S. elections and demanded the citizenship requirement in a previous meeting with Johnson. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Mark Ballard reports: 

Many of Johnson’s fellow Republicans see his insistence on attaching proof of citizenship language from the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or SAVE Act, as sidetracking negotiations on spending levels. … PolitiFact, a fact-checking service of the Florida-based Poynter Institute for Media Studies, found Johnson’s and Trump’s claims wanting. The handful of noncitizens who registered to vote did so accidentally when they acquired driver’s licenses, PolitiFact said. 

A new Louisiana law will require people registering to vote to prove their citizenship. Ballard explains the concerns from voting-rights groups: 

It’s working people who will have to take time out of their day and money out of their pockets to acquire a birth certificate, [Power Coalition’s Ashley Shelton] said. Unless you can find the one issued at your birth, it takes eight to 10 weeks to fulfill a request by mail. You can go in person to vital records offices or some clerks of court provided you can show photo identification and pay the exact amount in cash or money order — $15 for the certificate, $34 for the long-form birth certificate. “The results are like a poll tax,” Shelton said.

Number of the Day

683,110 – Number of people in Louisiana who live with food insecurity. (Source: Feeding Louisiana via The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate)