Wishing The Governor Safe Travel

J. Ryan Hudson is the LSU student body president. Yesterday he wrote a letter to the governor asking him to return to his own state and work on the budget crisis. He feels like the governor is spending too much time raising money and campaigning for candidates outside the state when he could be here fixing his own state’s problems. I respect his opinion but I think the governor could keep traveling and raising money because there’s nothing for him to do here. He should keep making speeches and impressing people with his knowledge and conservative values. He could sit at his desk 24 hours a day and still won’t have any more money to spend than he does now.

The governor’s office released a statement concerning the letter today. It included the following quote....

“In FY 2010, Louisiana ranked ninth in the nation for the amount of state dollars spent on higher education as a percentage of state taxes. So the answer is certainly not to raise taxes on the backs of Louisianians.”

There you have it. We are not going to raise any taxes on the backs of Louisianans to educate themselves and their children. Everybody needs to take their cuts and deal with it because this is what a lot of the people say that they want and we got it. If we want lower taxes and less government then we to deal with all the things you can’t do under those circumstances. When mental health services are cut you have to deal with it. When programs for the elderly and social services are cut you have to deal with that too. If your kids have to leave the state because you can’t afford to pay for the private college program that the state public colleges no longer have because of budget cuts then you have to deal with that too.

You don’t have to be a Republican or a Democrat to figure this out. It's just like everyday life. If I hang out for a few days on the weekend and blow my budget for the next pay period then I have to make adjustments. That’s what you do when you don’t have the money you are supposed to have or thought you would. We don't have the money and no wants to pay any extra so things have to be cut.

I can accept that but how many people can do the same if they think it’s going to affect something important to them? I am sure Bobby Jindal would have won the governor’s race either way but what if he said he was going to cut taxes when he got in office and that eventually it would affect higher education and who knows what else because the deficit won’t be getting any smaller? Who knows what might have happened.

The kids at LSU should just do the best they can with that they have like everyone else. Call the kids at Southern University of New Orleans so they can walk you through how to manage. We all have to do our part to keep taxes off the backs of Louisianans to educate ourselves. We can get a great education in Texas.