BATON ROUGE – Today in the House Ways and Means Committee, the Louisiana Legislature finally stood up in the face of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s obstinate demands and voted to kill SB284. The bill, accurately described in committee by Rep. Eddie Lambert (R) as “money laundering”, would have created an elaborate shell game, twisting the semantics of the law into knots to satisfy Jindal’s desperate pledge to Grover Norquist and the out-of-state interests he’s begging for support on his vanity campaign.
Over the objections of nine legislators still cowering under the threat of Jindal’s veto, 10 members of the Louisiana House showed the courage to, at long last, take a stand against the chicanery, deception and trickery that have been the hallmark of state fiscal policy under this governor. The proposed shell game, moving phantom fees and payments around on paper without doing a thing to address the $1.6 billion deficit, proved a bridge too far for a Legislature long held hostage by Jindal’s stubbornness and his vanity.
“Credit goes the 10 state representatives who showed their strength, to say nothing of their independence and good judgment, by voting to kill this ridiculous money laundering scheme,” said Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “Reps. Regina Barrow, Mike Danahay, Mickey Guillory, Marcus Hunter, Robert Johnson, Eddie Lambert, Joel Robideaux, Major Thibaut, Patrick Williams and Thomas Willmott all deserve our congratulations and our thanks for sparing Louisiana families the waste of time and resources this scheme represented.”
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