Louisiana faces significant budget deficits. Like other states facing fiscal challenges, one question to consider is if raising taxes isn’t “necessary.”

USA Today reported last week how the Illinois lame-duck General Assembly is “temporarily” raising income taxes from 3 percent to 5 percent and corporate taxes from 4.8 percent to 7 percent.

That’s a 67 percent hike in income taxes and a 46 percent hike in corporate taxes, pretty significant.

Of course you’ve got to wonder if temporary hikes work in Illinois like they do in Louisiana, where temporary and forever sometimes get confused?

Proponents of the tax hikes say they are necessary to reduce a $15 billion budget shortfall.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn approved the increases, saying the taxes were needed to keep from “careening toward bankruptcy.”

Interestingly, most states are reporting increases in revenues over earlier projections. USA Today reported that Illinois’s revenue was up $11 billion, almost 20 percent, compared to the same period a year ago.

A supposedly non-partisan Illinois research group dedicated to free-market principles has reportedly said the tax increases could cost the state 268,000 jobs over the next three to five years. “When you raise the cost of doing business, people vote with their feet,” says the group’s CEO.

The president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce says the tax increase sends a message so negative, “… outsiders will choose to avoid Illinois…” and consider it “anti-business.”

But others saying it’s more important for the state to regain financial stability.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has told legislators he not going to approve any tax increases.

Louisiana already has a reputation for being not-so-friendly to business so you can bet an increase in corporate taxes would do nothing to improve that.

And consider how neighboring Texas’ economy has been relatively good despite the fact it levies no state income tax on its citizens. Can we afford to make our state less attractive to those who might consider moving here, or staying here?

We hear all the time, “We don’t have a revenue problem but a spending problem.”

There will be plenty who will propose cuts that affect crippled children and anything else that will generate loud howls of protest, even though there are other areas where cuts would cause less controversy.

Indeed there are tough decisions to be made and some are going to hurt but we’ve got to demand government get its spending under control.

Voters need to keep reminding elected officials that’s what we expect.

WILL CHAPMAN

PUBLISHER