Looks Like Jindal Is Gonna Need To Perform An Exorcism On His Budget

I have to admit that I am gloating a little bit. It was just funny to me how Bobby Jindal suddenly became the "future of the Republican Party" right after Barack Obama won the election simply because he has brown skin. Oh Republicans will never admit to that, but the guy has pretty much as light or lighter of a resume as Caribou Barbie. Now we get word from the New York Times that conservatism has struck again and the victim this time is the state of Louisianna.

In Louisiana, the oil-drunk always ends badly. This time, though, the political stakes are bigger than in the past, as the Republican Party’s national pinup, Gov. Bobby Jindal, has to absorb the brunt of the state’s abrupt shift in fortunes. After glorying in the largess earlier this year, Mr. Jindal has gone to issuing sober news releases about hiring freezes and the new austerity.

His fate is tied as much as anybody’s to Louisiana’s overdependence on oil. Severance taxes, mostly from oil and gas, made up just over 8 percent of state tax revenue in 2007, according to Census Bureau data, much less than Alaska’s 64 percent, but higher than Texas’ 6.9 percent. The total take, including royalties and leases from oil, gas and other resources, accounts for just under 17 percent of the Louisiana budget.

But while the leading good-government group here, citing that addiction, warned last May against the Legislature’s plan for a $360 million income tax cut, Mr. Jindal called the tax break “terrific news” and happily signed it into law as legislators cheered.

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Health care and higher education will probably suffer cuts, the latter perilous in a state that regularly bemoans chronic white-collar outmigration, a trend that touched the governor’s own family when his brother moved out of Louisiana. Mr. Jindal recently pointed out that his state was the only one in the South to regularly lose more people than it gained. Now, in the universities that are supposed to be magnets and incubators, faculty positions will go unfilled; academic programs will probably be cut.

There could be some $109 million in education spending cuts alone, and an additional $160 million in health care cuts, much from Medicaid — unfavorable circumstances for the rollout of Mr. Jindal’s ambitious new plan to partly privatize Medicaid in the state.

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Indeed, there was teeth-gnashing when Gregory Albrecht, the legislature’s chief economist, used what most felt to be a low-ball forecast for the price of oil, $84 a barrel, when forecasting the revenue the state could spend. “You can tell by the subtext of the questioning — ‘why are you so low?’ ” Mr. Albrecht recalled. “Money was coming in like crazy. Why worry about delaying a tax cut?”

The seasons have turned, and the mood here now is much darker. Now, it is the president of L.S.U. who is gnashing his teeth.

“If we have an open position, we have to stop that looking,” said John V. Lombardi, the university system president. Next year, he said, “we may have to confront the possibility of eliminating academic programs.”

Doesn't this sound all too familiar? At some point Republicans are going to have to pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and realize that tax cuts do not cure all ills. But then again I am kind of cool with them never finding their way out of the wilderness, so game on Republicans. Keep up the wingnuttery!!!!