Slow your role, I’m only kidding. We here at JBdotC heart him as much as you do. I just needed a catchy headline to draw you in. It worked. 
The early (sigh) buzz for the 2012 campaign season seems to focus on Republican governors stepping up. The rub is that they all have to face the economic [place catastrophic buzzword here] and keeping the state a float. Do you raise taxes? Do you cut the budget? Do you invest in lottery tickets?
Louisiana Governor and conservative pin-up star Bobby Jindal as opted for budget cuts across the board. So sayeth an article someone sent me on Twitter:
As former president of the University of Louisiana System, Jindal knew full well the precarious position that higher education endures when it comes to budget cuts. Only health care and higher ed are largely unprotected from budget slashing when the state dollars don’t meet the budget demand.
This week, Jindal slashed by half the cuts higher education officials feared would come in the face of an imminent state budget shortfall. He announced that instead of making higher education and health care carry most of the burden of state cutbacks, he’d issue an executive order for a 3 percent belt-tightening across the board. His order calls for $162.5 million cut and challenged the Joint Legislative Committee to trim another $178.4 million from elsewhere next week.
The author concluded by saying, “If we are to progress as a state, we must progress as an entire state. If there is pain in reaching progress, that pain should be shared.” Therein lays the key problem any politician is going to have over the next few years. Simple common sense says that everyone is going to have to cut back. However it’s hard to pander for votes when you’re not promising voters everything and a pony.
A good start is to, before you tell people they might need to cut back for the time being and tighten their budget, lead by example and show that the state is going to do the same. There is nothing that annoys me more than when my elected officials look at federal spending (i.e. spending yours and my money) the same way I charge things on my American Express card.
Any budget is going to need to start with a little fiscal sanity. Bobby Jindal seems to get that.
And for whatever it’s worth, I still like the sound of Romney/Jindal ‘12.
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OK, that was not right. But is a great read despite the dirty trick. I hope Bobby gets you..
Ya got me!
Jane Q.
The thing that neither Bobby Jindal nor other Republicans who have suggested it get is that across-the-board cuts are a crummy substitute for what is really needed at every level of government: a fundamental change in the understanding of what government is and a restructuring along those lines.
Government is a service, no more, no less. It needs to be as good a service as anything offered in the private sector (understanding that the concept of service is continually being eroded by business today), but not duplicate activities that can be carried out in the private sector.
Gov. Jindal and other politicians need to take this opportunity to define clearly the appropriate activities for government, see that they are appropriately funded with quality personnel and resources, and jettison other areas of activity. Across-the-board cuts merely starve appropriate government activities and reduce their effectiveness while rewarding failure elsewhere.
So some how cutting taxes for me and my family is rewarding failure?
Bobby Jindal has a long way to go to be named the “it” guy of the Republican party. His response to Barak Obama’s speech was subpar and embarrassing. Please find us someone we can can have confidence in…someone who can at least stand up to at least half of Obama both on and off paper.