BATON ROUGE – After a narrow defeat in the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday that saw 10 legislators unite across party lines in defiance of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s bullying, state Sen. Jack Donahue began a series of desperate ploys to pass his money-laundering scam through backdoor maneuvering. Voted down in an open committee hearing, Donahue’s scam legislation was bolted on to an array of unrelated bills overnight, in hopes of forcing the lower chamber’s hand.

Together with Republican Senate President John Alario, Donahue continues to indulge in parliamentary games and trickery, abusing their time in the people’s house with legislation that serves no one but Jindal and his doomed presidential ambitions— at the expense of Louisiana taxpayers. An attempt to hijack Rep. Joel Robideaux’s film tax credit has already failed today, but Donahue and Alario remain determined to keep reviving their convoluted scheme again and again, wasting their time and taxpayers’ money as the session nears its close.

“Rep. Donahue and his allies are wasting time playing these shell games, while the window is closing on any opportunity to address the $1.6 billion deficit,” said Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “It’s an insult to working families that Republicans in the House and Senate would rather play games trying to appease Grover Norquist than to address the budget catastrophe they created.”

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