Last June, John Bel Edwards promised fellow house members he’d be back as governor.
“Well, here we are,” he greeted them, at the opening of Sunday’s special legislative session.
Yet in June, he was undoubtedly envisioning something a bit more triumphal than the reason for this special session.
“Today we face the largest budget deficit in our state’s history,” Edwards said.
Since taking office just over a month ago, the Democratic governor has been paddling furiously to stay afloat in the state’s sea of red ink, while kicking away some circling sharks – Republicans who don’t believe more revenue is the answer. Senator Conrad Appel of Metairie spoke for many of them, during this weekend’s joint budget committee hearings.
“You’re asking us to approve $2-billion of revenue in a special session, for which we have absolutely no opportunity to address structural issues in state government that could mitigate that dramatically,” Appel said. “And that troubles us.”
The Republican Legislative Caucus sent Edwards a letter last week, urging him to let them try to cut state government first, before asking for higher taxes. Edwards answered that in his session-opening speech.
“We cannot just cut our way out of this crisis,” the governor declared, though he noted his plan to fix the current year’s budget shortfall includes his order for $160-million in cuts.
Overall, there was less open defiance among lawmakers than initially expected. Perhaps some lost their appetite when Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne presented the next budget, which has to be based only on revenues the state is currently guaranteed to receive.
“We are submitting a budget that reduces the following entities by 24 percent: the legislative branch of government, the judicial branch of government, Corrections, DHH, Higher education and the Health Care Services District,” Dardenne said in his Saturday presentation to the Joint Budget Committee. “Every other agency in government is going to be reduced by 63 percent.”