Just in case you haven't been following the news in our GOParadise, the Louisiana House Ways and Means Committee passed--without dissent--a measure to achieve the ultimate Republican wet dream: elimination of all personal income taxes. The measure to phase out income taxes will now go before the full House, where it is expected to pass handily.
Oh, we're not quite on the expressway to Reaganland yet. The state senate got a bit gun-shy over the vision of a taxless Xanadu and modified its bill to eliminate state income taxes to merely study the implications of the plan.
Implications, schmimplications! We don't need no steeenking taxes! Why, we're only $2 billion in the hole this year. Why not eliminate another $5 bil in revenue per annum? Just think of the jobs we'll create, the growth we'll achieve!
Back in the 1980s, the legislature decided the old state license plate motto--"Sportsman's Paradise"--was too quaint and replaced it, briefly, with the phrase "A Dream State." Public reaction ranged from tepid to derisive ("A Sleepwalker's Paradise" novelty plates appeared in shops) and the lege went back to the old motto.
Now, with our state at the gates of real Laffer Heaven, I believe we should go back to that plate.
Because if our lawmakers and the fine citizens who elect them really think we're going to achieve some kind of employer's Mecca and lift our citizens out of poverty, ignorance and hopelessness by blowing a $5 billion hole in the budget, than we are truly living in a Dream State.