Gov. Bobby Jindal was interviewed by FOX News on Nov. 15th to both promote his new book and enhance his political image.
Near the end of the interview, Piyush tried to pass this little nugget of wisdom off: “And by the way, we’ve done all these things at the state level. We’ve cut taxes, we’ve cut spending, we balance our budget. Why can’t Washington do the same thing?”
If you’re not familiar with Jindal’s political plan, it goes like this: hop, skip and jump from job to job as quickly as possible, finally “ending” in his governorship. And If you’ve missed this episode, his politics recently have been a mess.
He makes a habit of leaving Louisiana to promote either his book or fellow politicians. That’s a normal part of having a politician in leadership, and it can’t be helped any more than having to take the dog out. It’s just the nature of the beast.
But I’m a bit thrown off by his claim of balancing the budget.
I’m not sure if he’s being intentionally ignorant to try to paint Louisiana positively in the limelight, or if he really believes the trash he says, but let’s be clear here: The way a state budgets itself is fundamentally different from the way a government that can print money budgets itself, and to compare the two like this is absolutely ridiculous.
To be fair, what Jindal said does have some truth to it.
He did indeed cut taxes. We no longer have sales tax on manufacturing machinery and equipment, a franchise tax on corporate debt or a sales tax on natural gas and business utilities. In fact, by his own claim, Jindal has passed the largest Louisiana income tax cut in history.
Specifically, these tax cuts encourage businesses to do their work here. If the taxes are lower, businesses are encouraged to move to Louisiana, which is good.
But why in the world would we be passing sweeping tax cuts for business or pass the largest income tax reduction in history when we legitimately need money?
Politics.
Much of Jindal’s political rhetoric plays off our common views on politicians: The fat cats running our government are corrupt and trying to hide everything from you. They sit in armchairs smoking their pipes as they wait for their hooker and a line of drugs — all on the people’s dime.
In comes Bobby with a statistic about low graduation rates at four-year colleges and how the system needs to be “fixed.”
I would think most of Louisiana’s citizens now know we have a small problem with education and health care these days.
In an absolutely and totally unrelated campaign, Jindal is going on a “Building a Better LA for Our Children” tour, where he goes parish to parish announcing the wonderful good he has done for us.
What a joke.
His rationale for raping and pillaging Louisiana’s educational system is this: Apparently, if someone here is going to pursue post-secondary education, they are much more likely to go a four-year university than someone from another state would, so the ratio of people entering four-year colleges to two-year colleges is higher than in other states.
By his claim, when students from other states in the South leave high school, the numbers are closer to 45 percent heading off to a two-year program and 55 percent to a four-year, on average.
This difference, he believes, is leading to an abnormally high dropout rate, the second-highest in the South, according to Louisiana’s website.
I disagree. The underlying rationale behind this claim is that students aren’t earning degrees at four-year universities because the work is too tough. If that is the case, it means we aren’t educating our kids well enough.
But an unexpected pregnancy, lack of funds and poor counseling in high school could all lead to the same end. For example, according to a study published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention this October, Louisiana is ranked in the top 10 in the U.S. for teenage births. Wouldn’t that affect dropout rates, both for high school and early college students?
The bottom line: Jindal is proudly parading around the U.S. claiming to have balanced Louisiana’s budget and cut taxes. What he hasn’t said is that he’s using one-time funds and destroying vital programs to do it, so the “solution” is unsustainable. Then he uses us to make fun of Washington.
Good job, Bobby.
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
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Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]