Opinion: Tax cuts create ‘a failed state’

It’s Louisiana, where the state is running out of money. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, March 8, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist ‘A failed state.’ Until recently, Kansas offered the clearest cautionary tale about deep tax cuts. The state’s then-governor, Sam Brownback, promised that the tax cuts he signed in 2012 and 2013 would lead to an economic boom. [They didn’t]( and Kansas instead had to cut popular programs like education. Now Kansas seems to have a rival for the title of the state that’s caused the most self-inflicted damage through tax cuts: Louisiana. “No two ways about it: Louisiana is a failed state,” Robert Mann, a Louisiana State University professor and New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist, [wrote recently](. A special session of the State Legislature, called specifically to deal with a budget crisis caused by a lack of tax revenue, failed to do so, and legislators adjourned on Monday. No one is sure what will happen next. If legislators can’t agree on tax increases, cuts to education and medical care will likely follow. The targets would include “health care programs that cover medically fragile children and the developmentally disabled, as well as the popular Taylor Opportunity Program for Students that provides tuition-covering grants for thousands of college students,” [as Elizabeth Crisp of The Advocate, the Baton Rouge newspaper,]( explained. Louisiana’s former governor, Bobby Jindal, deserves much of the blame. A Republican wunderkind when elected at age 36 in 2008, he cut income taxes and [roughly doubled the size of corporate tax breaks](. By the end of his two terms, businesses were able to use those breaks to avoid paying about 80 percent of the taxes they would have owed under the official corporate rate. At first, Jindal spun a tale about how the tax cuts would lead to an economic boom — but they didn’t, just as they didn’t in Kansas. Instead, [Louisiana’s state revenue plunged](. The tax cuts helped the rich become richer and left the state’s middle class and poor residents with struggling schools, hospitals and other services. The experiences of Louisiana and Kansas are particularly important because the federal government is running a version of those states’ economic policies. In December, President Trump signed a tax cut [skewed overwhelmingly to the rich](. Contrary to every independent analysis, he and congressional Republicans justified the plan with claims that it would turbocharge economic growth. We know how this story will end. When the tax cut fails to produce an economic boom, the middle class and poor will be left to pay the price. There is still a good solution available to Louisiana, though, and it happens to be the one that Kansas eventually chose: [Undo the tax cuts](. Related: If you like interactive graphics, [you can come up with your own solution]( to Louisiana’s budget crisis by choosing among a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. The calculator is a joint project of L.S.U.’s Manship School of Mass Communication, The Knight Foundation and The Advocate, and it was inspired by [a federal-budget calculator]( that The New York Times created in 2010. More on Texas. As I mentioned yesterday, the primary results in Texas this week suggest that Republicans remain heavy favorites to win statewide races there this year. The state just has more Republican voters than Democratic ones, and [Musa al-Gharbi argues in an op-ed]( that those Republicans seem more enthusiastic about voting this year than many people realize. The highest-profile Texas race is Ted Cruz’s re-election campaign, versus an intriguing Democrat named Beto O’Rourke. Democrats received better news in several House districts, [as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report noted](. Democratic turnout in the primary was strong enough to give the party reason to believe it can compete in the three districts now represented by Republicans: Texas’s Seventh Congressional district (in the Houston area), the 32nd (in the Dallas area), and, most ambitiously, the 23rd (in the far Southwestern part of the state). How does primary turnout say anything meaningful about general-election outcomes, anyway? [The Upshot’s Nate Cohn explains](. Feeling overwhelmed by news? Turn off your news alerts, at least temporarily. I turned off mine months ago and have not regretted it. [As Farhad Manjoo writes in The Times]( “If something really big happens, you will find out.” I was pleased to see Farhad endorse daily email newsletters in that same column. The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Nick Kristof on [a 15-year-old hero from the Florida shooting named Anthony Borges](. Op-Ed Columnist [Gary Cohn’s Breaking Point]( By BRET STEPHENS His resignation is a warning to all Republicans. Op-Ed Columnist [Mr. Trump, Here’s a Teenage Hero; It’s Your Turn!]( By NICHOLAS KRISTOF A 15-year-old stood up to the Parkland gunman, yet the president won’t stand up to the N.R.A. Op-Ed Columnist [The Worst People]( By CHARLES M. BLOW Trump promised again and again to hire the “best people.” That didn’t happen. Contributing Op-Ed Writer [Is Trump About to Start a Trade War?]( By RUCHIR SHARMA Probably not, because his tariffs are narrowly drawn. 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