Budget anticipates $1.3 billion revenue drop

Governor Bobby Jindal's proposed state budget anticipates a $1.3 billion drop in state revenues. Because the state constitution forbids an unbalanced budget, there must be significant cuts.

Much of the burden will fall on higher education and health care. Lawmakers say that is because most of the rest of the budget is dedicated and cannot be reduced. That's not entirely true - as ELog reported before, a good number of those dedications could easily be changed if the legislature had sufficient backbone.

And as Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollion reports here, the state has a big rainy day fund and a $400 million economic development fund, neither one of which the governor plans to tap to ameliorate the current crisis.