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How Not to SAVE the Budget

The bill that was supposed to save the budget from Governor Bobby Jindal’s veto pen sank in House committee Wednesday.

Jack Donahue’s SB 284, known as the SAVE bill, would have created a fee on college students. Students wouldn’t actually pay it; instead, just by registering for classes, they would assign the tax credit for that “fee” over to higher education’s Board of Regents.

“This, to me, just seems like it’s a gimmick,” Gonzales Rep. Eddie Lambert said of the scheme. “Why are we doing this?”

“It’s a method by which we can fund higher education,” Sen. Donahue explained. “We’re using the tax money that we raised to do that. I’m thinking in my mind that makes it revenue neutral.”

“It’s because it’s revenue neutral? Is that why we’re doing this?” Lambert asked, with apparent incredulity.

‘Yeah, it’s allowing us to offset the taxes that we raised,” Donahue replied.

The SAVE bill had generally been viewed as the anchor legislation for offsets, balancing tax increases with new tax credits, a necessity to make the budget comply with the governor’s pledge to Americans for Tax Reform.

Revenue Secretary Tim Barfield jumped in to try and rescue the SAVE bill, and got held under by Marksville Rep. Robert Johnson.

“We certainly want this to work in a way that it’s palatable to as many members as possible,” Barfield said of the concept.

“Is it palatable to the members, or is it palatable to this tax pledge that our governor has signed?  Because that’s the reality of this, am I right?” Johnson asked, aggressively.

“This bill would serve as an offset for raising revenue. That’s an important consideration for this administration,” Barfield responded.

"So that’s what this is really about,” Johnson said, then declared, “It’s a fictitious fee, to assign a credit, to be able to reach tax neutrality for the governor.”

House Ways and Means, led by its chairman Joel Robideaux, voted 10 to 9 for involuntary deferral of the bill. In effect, they’ve done a cannonball into the Senate’s plan to keep the budget within the governor’s "swim lanes" of revenue neutrality.