Posted on 10/28/2005 1:08:35 PM PDT by caryatid
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Louisiana's budget deficit got an official number Friday, nearly $971 million lost in state tax income that the governor and lawmakers will have to slash from state spending in the remaining eight months of the budget year.
Economists warned the budget problems could worsen as they get more concrete details of the lost sales, income, gambling and business taxes from the back-to-back blows of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
(Excerpt) Read more at wwltv.com ...
You can't lose what you never had. Revenues are down because there are not as many people there! All your dollars are belong to the people.........
Before we shed tears for New Orleans over lost sales tax revenue, keep in mind that this is a potential loss. It's not the same as losing actual cash in hand.
One important point. If there are fewer people living in LA, wouldn't it be logical to assume the state, aside from hurricane repairs, would have less needs for spending? Wha's that? I forgot. This is a Democrat controlled state so the fewer the people, the more money is needed to run things.
I visit a company that set up 5 office trailers in the parking lot of their Tennessee facility and moved their operation to Tennessee. The talk is that the move is permanent. They call it the fivewide as "she is over there in the fivewide"
They have erected a flagpole and fly the LSU flag.
No it's not just sales tax revenues that they lost but state income tax revenues too. Over 200,000 jobs were lost in New Orleans alone, you know like doctors, lawyers, refinery workers, professional football players, etc. We got hit by two major hurricanes and it affected both the income tax and sales tax revenues. If people don't work they don't make money, if they don't make money then the state and fed don't get their revenues.
Yep... I agree that Louisiana was hit pretty hard. From what I recall, Mississippi and Alabama got nailed too.
Raise the sale tax rate then. Sheesh. Stupid politicians.
Agreed, if the state is losing money do what every other good lefty does: raise taxes on the poor saps that still live there....
I placed a big order with Dixie Art Supply this week. Doesn't help the sales tax base in LA but helps a business still trying to operate in LA...
They did not get nailed twice in a month though. SWLA was able to pick up some of the slack revenue wise until Rita hit. Just the lost revenue from the gambling, petrochemical industries and other businesses that were offline for over 3 weeks caused a greater loss than had the state been hit by only Katrina. That is where the greater losses have come from.
Face it a major city was destroyed that is why you hear about it and the MSM has focused only on NOLA. I live in SWLA that got hit hard by Rita and we are handling the problem very well so the MSM moved on.
I'm sure if San Francisco or LA would get wiped out in an earthquake then we would be hearing about it for a couple of months too wouldn't we?
Yea, I know why. But if I told 'ya, you'd probably call me biased or racist ...
If they'd open a season on Louisian politicians, I'd pay five bucks for a license, twenty if there was no bag limit.
Probbly oughter be a good idear to invest in a flak jacket though, to give hunters a chance of surviving all the friendly fire.
-PJ
In Cajun country, there is a simple rule "if it moves and appears that it's a living thing, shoot it, put some sauce on it, and eat it". No limits!
Easy to enough to deduce when the headline states that the entirety of the loss is in sales taxes.
Wha's that?
Logic. Inapplicable in a dem run state. LOL
That's a non-starter. Texas doesn't want it. Louisiana would have to PAY Texas to take it.
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