Jindal’s Budget And The United Nations – Wingin’ It Wednesday

This week's edition of "Wingin' It Wednesday" saw only two panelists. Carol Ross and Nick Bouterie joined "Mornings with Ken and Bernie" as Warren Caudle and Mike Stagg were unable to attend. The pair of panelists discussed Governor Jindal's handling of the state's budget as well as the amount of money the US gives to the United Nations.

Here's what the panel had to say:

1. Governor Jindal's proposed $24.7-billion state budget for next year.  Part of the Governor's budget relies on the state making over $47-million off the sale of some unused state properties. The budget is depending for the fifth year on one-time money.  What are your thoughts on the budget?

Nick Bouterie started us off:

This past weekend Governor Jindal gave statements about how Washington should take some cues from Baton Rouge regarding the sequester. State Representative John Schroeder said that this was the same type of spending that has led this administration to had expenditures exceed state revenues three out of the last four years.
It comes down to all the uses of contingencies in the budget. they're going to go into session with a $278 million shortfall to deal with because certain contingencies didn't develop. When you're planning these budgets, yes higher ed will have to take some cuts, but you have to have priorities. If you're realistic with the budget, and you forecast it correctly, and you've got a legislature and a governor who's willing to take some heat but be realistic, you're allowing higher ed and the hospital to spread these cuts over 12 months, rather than playing games and forcing 6 month cuts that you new were coming anyway. I think there's a lot of Governor Jindal talking one way, but what's operating right now isn't really reality.

Carol Ross added:

Governor Jindal is all smoke and mirrors. These so called "reforms" are not reforms and will set back real reforms for a very long time. It's smoke and mirrors. It looks good on the national stage, but if you really get into the weeds, the per capita state debt has reached an all time record, the state is within striking distance of the constitutional cap on state debt, the current state budget has a 250 million hole in it. It's all smoke and mirrors.
If the governor had really been serious about reforms, he would have done something with more substance, and not just rushed it through.

 

2. How serious can we be about the UN?

Carol commented:

No one's really paying attention to the UN in Congress, and about 2/3 of their budget comes from us. When you see some of the scandals that UN has had, the peace keepers in the Congo raping and pillaging, the Oil for Food Program has been a joke.
My opinion is we sequester the UN right out of the US budget. When we started it was 120 democratically elected nations. Now it's dominated by third world thugs, dictators, and people with terrible human rights violations. Lets get rid of it.

Nick responded:

I can't understand why we'd fund 2/3 of the UN budget, or any other country's budget outside of the United States right now. We need to go as far as to look at Israel. We need to look at how much money and how much arms we're sending to Israel. It may sound selfish, but we need to look out for ourselves. At this point in time we need to put a halt on foreign aide.

Click on the play button below for the complete audio.

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think about today’s Wingin’ It Wednesday topics. Who got it right, who got it wrong, and who was way off? Let us know in the comment section.