Bobby Jindal in the land of dinosaurs
by Tom Sullivan
Even as Jeb! Bush and Hillary Clinton prepare for their close-ups, out in bayou country a GOP presidential wannabe is trying to keep from being the next Sam Brownback.
Republicans' approach to taxes is not unlike Biblical literalists' approach to confronting evolution. Christian fundamentalists will construct an elaborate house of cards on the shakiest of foundations and spend enormous time and effort trying to keep a puff of breeze from knocking it over before they will question their crappy theology. (Visit the Creation Museum on Bullittsburg Church Rd. in Petersburg, Kentucky, and don't forget to stop by the gift shop.)
Republicans — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, for example — will concoct an elaborate edifice of nonsense to create the illusion that they are not raising taxes, you know, to pay for services their constituent public actually wants. Like funding universities and hospitals. Facing a potential $1.6 billion budget shortfall (that's another story), Jindal has gone to Creation Museum lengths to keep from offending Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Fairness.
Here's how the local paper explained it last week:
State Rep. Joel Robideaux, R-Lafayette, and 10 other Louisiana House members sent Norquist a letter (PDF) Sunday night, asking Norquist to rethink his approach to Louisiana's budget and the "no tax" pledge....
The governor has threatened to veto any budget plan or tax bills that don't meet Norquist's "no tax" requirements. Currently, the governor is pushing the Legislature to adopt a controversial higher education tax credit -- commonly called SAVE -- that Jindal says will make the budget comply with Norquist's wishes.
These are leaders, mind you, elected by the people of Louisiana, sending a mother-may-I letter to a gadfly in Washington, DC for permission to do their jobs. And their governor wants to be president of the United States and stand up to terr'ists.
Here's how Jindal proposes to SAVE his ass with Norquist. It is Bobby's legislative, show-and-tell diorama of children riding dinosaurs:
It would assess a fee of about $1,500 per higher education student and raise about $350 million total, but only on paper. Students wouldn’t have to pay anything because an offsetting tax credit for the $1,500. Nor would universities receive any new money.
However, the SAVE fund would create a tax credit for the $350 million that Jindal could use to offset $350 million of the new revenue that legislators are proposing to raise.
Slate's Jordan Weissmann unravels that knot:
So, to repeat, Jindal created a fake fee for students, and a fake tax credit to balance it out, which ultimately leads to no money changing hands, but apparently satisfies whatever agreement Jindal struck with Norquist to preserve the illusion that he didn't raise taxes. “It’s an embarrassing bill to vote for," one Republican state representative told the New York Times, demonstrating the sort of candor that only becomes possible once your own party's governor has alienated the vast majority of his state and abandoned all pretense of rational policymaking in pursuit of an inevitable also-ran performance in the GOP primary.
For a cultist, it's a small price to pay to keep from questioning your crappy theology and making your bust of Ayn Rand tear up like Sam Brownback.