You know, I always thought that my writing would remain focused on liberal Democrats and their misguided policies.  It is very interesting to me that lately I’m focusing on Republicans.  Who would have seen that coming?

I have spent a lot of time on the House of Representatives the last few weeks.  And they have certainly earned that criticism (Rep. Marcelle and her cronies on the Municipal Committee never did receive any meaningful consequences for their actions).  But let’s turn our attention to the Senate.  Because while the House is allowing way too many shenanigans from Democrats to kill good legislation, they are at least passing a lot of good legislation along the way as well.

That isn’t really the case in the Senate. It actually seems like the Senate is spending most of their energy on killing good legislation.

Can there be a bigger disappointment in the 2024 legislature than Senate President Cameron Henry?  There was so much excitement around his election to head the Senate from conservatives across the state.  The only excitement about him now is coming from the Left, since the Senate is doing an outstanding job of gumming up conservative reform measures coming across the marble from the House.  And the Senate President has a tremendous amount of control over that process, both through assigning committee membership and picking which committees to send legislation to.

Let’s run through a few of these issues that have occurred so far:

First, the senate watered down the closed primaries legislation.  They amended it so that it would not apply to the state legislature, which is the main place that it is needed.  It has been widely reported that there were harsh words between Cameron Henry and the governor over this issue.  If I were a cynic (which I am), I might think that a bunch of RINO’s in the senate wanted to protect themselves from being tossed out of office when they were challenged by a more conservative candidate in a closed Republican primary.  The subsequent actions of the senate only provide more evidence to that theory…

Currently, the Education Savings Account legislation (HB 745) that passed the house is just sitting in the senate with very little hope of ever seeing the light of day.  In my opinion, this is the most consequential piece of legislative reform in the 2024 session.  This bill passed the house on a 72-32 vote and was sent to the Senate on April 9, assigned to the Senate Education Committee on April 15.  And there it has been sitting, waiting for action that likely will never come.  The senate president has the power to change this, but it is pretty clear that Cameron Henry has no intention of allowing this legislation to pass.  He has come as close to publicly admitting this as any politician ever will. Instead, the Senate passed a badly watered down version of Gov. Landry’s GATOR Scholarship program, which will spend only $1.8 million on school choice in its first year.

A little research will provide several more examples of this.  In fairness, the Senate did pass Rep. Roger Wilder’s HB 608, which keeps biological males out of women’s restrooms.  This was a huge conservative win, though it’s on a cultural, rather than structural governance, front.

Many other important items which involve how Louisiana is governed, which is the area in the most dire need of reform, are languishing or being killed. Chief among those items: a constitutional convention to revamp the unwieldy and wasteful apparatus of state government, and a bill doing just that overwhelmingly passed in the House. For two weeks it’s languished in the Senate with no action while Henry has soaked up accolades from Marxist-funded “news” organizations like the Advocate and Louisiana Illuminator as the “responsible voice” of the Louisiana Legislature.

The darling of the state’s left-wing radical media is not what the voters elected Cameron Henry to be.

It has long been said that the Senate is where good legislation goes to die.  The optimist in me thought that with a Republican supermajority and Cameron Henry elected as Senate President, that would finally change.  Once again, I have been disappointed, and the cynic in me is giving the optimist a heavy dose of “I told you so!”

Back on May 2, MacAoidh wrote a column titled, “Has Cameron Henry Decided Who He Is Yet?”  From where I’m sitting, it looks like he HAS decided who he is, and it is not good news for the conservative movement in Louisiana.