Gov. Jeff Landry is ignoring Louisiana's existential crisis
By focusing on tax cuts for rich people over insurance rates, Landry and his GOP allies are jeopardizing Louisiana’s future
Homeowners’ and auto insurance rates are squeezing hard-pressed Louisiana families and threatening our state’s future. So, of course, Gov. Jeff Landry and his allies spent the last two weeks cutting taxes for wealthy taxpayers and corporations instead.
Landry hasn’t done anything for the people profiled in reporter Sam Karlin’s Baton Rouge Advocate piece on Sunday:
As home and flood insurance costs spike in risk-prone areas around the country, the toll is hitting elderly Louisianans and people on fixed incomes particularly hard.
And Louisiana is aging faster than almost any other state, as young people flee and older residents stay put as they age.
The collision of those trends is revealing an ugly truth about south Louisiana: for many, it’s an increasingly difficult place to grow old.Staggering premium hikes are cutting into fixed incomes, often solely composed of Social Security. Many older Americans, like Pertuit, own their homes outright, meaning they are able to drop home insurance because they don’t have a mortgage.
A growing number of people also appear to be going without protection in a bid to lessen the financial burden, setting up a financial disaster the next time a major hurricane hits. Nearly 20% of homeowners in Louisiana are going without homeowners insurance, according to an analysis of American Community Survey data. That number rises to 30% for people who don’t have a mortgage. Nationally, about 13% go without homeowners insurance. [emphasis mine]
I was wrong to write that Landry has done nothing for these people. He’s done less than nothing.
He just raised their taxes.
As Neva Butkus, a policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, wrote in the Louisiana Illuminator last week, Landry’s new tax plan isn’t about helping Louisiana’s economy as much as about giving wealthy people a hefty tax cut:
This tax swap would result in the lowest-income 20% of Louisianans (with incomes under $22,100 a year) receiving a small tax increase due to the state’s additional reliance on deeply regressive sales taxes. Middle-income households making $55,900 on average would receive an average cut of $87. Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1% of Louisiana households with average annual incomes of $1.8 million would receive an average tax cut of nearly $15,400 – more than a full-time minimum wage worker would make in a year in Louisiana.
I know it’s not as fun as cutting taxes on the wealthy, but if Landry and Republican lawmakers wanted to strengthen Louisiana’s economy, they’d call a special session after Christmas to tackle skyrocketing auto and homeowners’ insurance rates.
I’ve written this before, but it’s worth repeating: The biggest threat to Landry’s political future is a hurricane that destroys Louisiana’s home insurance market.
When hundreds of thousands of people south of I-10 can’t afford to live in their homes because they can’t afford or find insurance, they’ll not care that Landry cut state income tax rates by a bit in 2024.
When people in New Orleans, Houma, Slidell, and Lake Charles cannot sell their homes because insurance premiums make them unaffordable to potential buyers, they will not care what Landry did to attract more industry.
Unaffordable homeowner and car insurance rates are existential threats to Louisiana, one that Landry ignores at his political peril.
The extra $15,000 in tax savings he gives the average wealthy family is enough to subsidize homeowner’s insurance premiums for several New Orleans families.
Tax cuts for affluent families aren’t the solution to our economic problems. And the subsidies that Landry and Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple gave to insurance companies won’t stabilize or lower premiums, either.
In both cases, Landry hands out our money to rich people and corporations, expecting it to trickle down to the rest of us. It won’t.
It may be an article of faith on the right, but there’s not much evidence that a state’s corporate tax rate is why corporations leave or move there.
On the contrary, the evidence suggests that when states raise revenue to invest in their workforces, infrastructure, and schools, they are usually rewarded with stronger economies.
Cutting corporate taxes is not the panacea Landry and others say it is. As a 2016 paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond observed, “There is disagreement among economists over whether cuts in state business taxes have any effect on a state's economic performance, but they mostly agree that if they do, the impact is at most quite small.” The report quoted Syracuse University economist Michael Wasylenko, who summed up the view of many economists: “Taxes do not appear to have a substantial effect on economic activity among states.”
Louisiana was lucky in 2024. We didn’t have a massive hurricane. But eventually, our luck will run out. We’ll have a monster storm. And our rickety homeowner’s insurance market will crumble. In the aftermath, few homeowners will be able to afford or obtain insurance.
Even homeowners in Baton Rouge and parts north will feel the effects as companies that don’t default abandon the state.
It's already happening. And it will accelerate until our state’s leaders do something about it.
When average homeowners in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Lake Charles cannot insure their homes, they will remember — because you and I will remind them — that the tax rate for rich people was Landry’s top concern.
More questions about how abortion bans pressure doctors to avoid standard, life-saving care in straightforward miscarriage cases
There’s another horrifying story out of Texas about a pregnant woman who suffered a miscarriage and bled to death in a Houston-area hospital because doctors there were afraid of being prosecuted if they administered life-saving care.
You can read the story about 35-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case in ProPublica at this link.
Here’s the key paragraph:
The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.
How many more pregnant women must die in Texas, Louisiana, and elsewhere before Republican governors and politicians live up to the “pro-life” label they’ve claimed?
You’re not a pro-life lawmaker if you do nothing as pregnant women suffer and die in your state’s hospitals.
My new book: You Are My Sunshine: Jimmie Davis and the Biography of a Song
Here’s a periodic reminder about my new book coming in February: LSU Press will publish You Are My Sunshine: Jimmie Davis and the Biography of a Song.
I’m pleased with the early reviews, including this one from Jason Berry, author of City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300:
“In You Are My Sunshine, Robert Mann fuses the story of a song, from its remote origins when Jimmie Davis purchased the rights, across the years of Davis's fame as a country star and twice-elected Louisiana governor. Mann adroitly shows how the genial Davis became a cipher for white supremacists' attack on integrated schools in the early 1960s. Behind the song's sweet lyrics — refashioned by blues rocker Ray Charles in 1962 — lay a governor who spent four decades out of office using music to whitewash his dark political record. What a story! Bob Mann is a Louisiana treasure.”
If you’d like a signed, personalized copy from me, you can pre-order at RobertMannBooks.com.
You can also order signed, personalized copies of my other books there. Those titles include Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU, Becoming Ronald Reagan: The Rise of a Conservative Icon, and Daisy Petals and Mushrooms Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater and the Ad that Changed American Politics.
They make great Christmas gifts for the political junkies in your life.
Fortunately I’ve been able to buy homeowners insurance on my home, albeit at a higher premium than I like. Now the State will be saving me a couple of dollars on my La. income taxes but the few dollars that I may save will be spent in paying higher sales taxes on goods and services that I buy. Unfortunately many lower income state residents will have their social services cut because the new tax cuts for upper income La. residents will drain the State’s ability to fund some current social services to low income La. residents going forward.
I'm afraid social Darwinism has become the order of the day for the new Republican Party. In addition, the assumption is that those being harmed by these policies are too dumb to even realize it, much less do anything about it. And, you know what? We seem determined to prove them right. Worse, their adherents will never admit any fault publicly even if the consequences demand it.