Over the past couple of weeks, Senate President Cameron Henry and Speaker of the House Phillip DeVillier have been pouring a ton of money into an (attempted) victory lap touting what they view as the huge wins that they have racked up.  They are running lots of chest-thumping commercials funded by various political action committees tied to them.  Unfortunately for them, the people of Louisiana (who are not elected officials) do not seem to have such a rosy outlook.  In fact, polls suggest that the state legislature is not viewed in a positive light at all.  Of course, this is politics, and we all know that you need to act like you are winning even when you aren’t.  That is just how the game is played.

It does seem very strange that Henry and DeVillier are working together on this, though.  DeVillier could be excused if he used every opportunity he had to speak ill of Henry.  After all, Cameron Henry is largely responsible for any hot water that DeVillier and House Republicans find themselves in.

Animosity between the two would be expected.  Working together to claim victory from squandered opportunities just seems bizarre.

DeVillier and the House of Representatives have done a lot of really good work over the past two years.  They have also dropped the ball a few times, but by and large, they have passed a lot of the legislation that is needed to move Louisiana forward.

Cameron Henry has single-handedly killed most of that good legislation.

A lot of very good insurance reform bills were passed by the House.  A lot.  And the best of it was killed by Henry and the Senate (primarily Senate Judiciary A Committee, handpicked by Henry).  It could be argued that Representative Emily Chenevert’s comparative fault bill is the only truly significant piece of insurance reform that made it past the Senate.  The rest seems to be relatively minor, although as a total package, it does represent a step in the right direction (that one is for Moon Griffon!).

Then we have HB148, which started as a good bill in the House and got amended in the Senate into something that moves us backwards.  That is the one the gives the insurance commissioner the power to basically set rates in the state.  Setting aside the fact that it is completely socialistic, with Louisiana’s history, who could possibly think that trusting the insurance commissioner with that kind of power is a good idea?

Tim Temple, our current Insurance Commissioner, doesn’t even want that power, much to his credit.

And what insurance company in its right mind would want a Louisiana politician to have the power to decide whether they are allowed to make money or not?  It doesn’t take much imagination to see where that situation has the potential to go off the rails.  After all, we aren’t that far removed from having three insurance commissioners in a row end up in prison in this state.

And do you remember the GATOR Plan?  School choice and education accountability for Louisiana, finally?  The House devised what should have been and could still be a great program.  But so far, Cameron Henry has completely stifled it and refused to allow the type of expansion of that program that the governor and the house clearly intended.

Again, the House passed a great piece of legislation and Cameron Henry is keeping his foot on its neck.

DeVillier is spending a lot of effort touting the reduction of the state income tax to 3%.  He claimed on a recent radio interview that it is a big deal, and no one is talking about it.  There is, of course, a good reason that no one is talking about it.  This is one issue that the House flubbed all on their own, without Henry’s help.  It speaks volumes about how out of touch the legislature is from the regular people of this state.

No one really cares or is impressed by the income tax reduction, because in the same piece of legislation, they increased sales taxes to make it revenue-neutral.  Legislators may think that the label on a tax matters, but the rest of the world does not.  When John Q. Public gets his tax bill, all he cares about is how much of his hard-earned money the government just took from him, and what did he get in return.  He does not care if it is half income tax and half sales tax, or if it is all sales tax.  That makes absolutely no difference to anyone who does not work in the capital.

And let us not forget that this was done instead of letting that “temporary” 0.45% sales tax expire that was forced on us in 2016 because a Republican controlled legislature didn’t have the courage to stand up to John Bel Edwards.  That tax was not only extended for another five years by the current legislature, but they also increased it to a full 1%.  Oh, and they now tax lots of services that have never been taxed before in Louisiana.

Giving Louisiana the highest sales tax in the nation is NOT a step forward. Especially when the original promise, which was to kill the state income tax as Mississippi is moving to do, has gone utterly unfulfilled.

The initial reports that I have heard suggest that the income tax reduction so far is slightly larger than the sales tax increase.  That was purely accidental, and the legislature is not owed any credit for that.  Their intent was to offset the income tax cut with the increased sales tax.  Period, end of story.  DeVillier calling that a tax cut is nothing more than the proverbial blowing of smoke.  The people of Louisiana are still being taxed at basically the same rate, and they look around and realize that they aren’t getting much for that money back in a return on their (forced) investment.

And they still can’t afford their insurance.

And the state government is as fat and bloated as it ever was.

The Louisiana voters did their job in 2023 and threw out many of the politicians who have kept us in the status quo for so many years.  And everything is not negative.  There are a lot of positive steps being made in this state.  It would be dishonest to say otherwise.

But we thought we were electing the hare to run this race.  We would probably be happy with the tortoise, but the voters haven’t even gotten that.  What we got is two steps forward, one step back at best.

The question is, what will happen when Louisianans begin to perceive that the people we elected in 2023 elected turn out to be just like the ones we were trying to replace?  Will the people of Louisiana replace the replacements?  Or will we decide that we can’t win and disengage again, whether from the political process or by renting U-Hauls?

My hope is that reform wins the day, but I fear it’ll be disengagement instead.