Jan Moller is an analyst and reporter for public policy in Louisiana, and is the executive director of Invest in Louisiana. He discuses the impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on Louisiana.
On his impressions of the Big Beautiful Bill
I think this was an enormous missed opportunity, and something that is going to have far-reaching negative effects on a lot of people in Louisiana. It will have a lot of effects on state government, even though it was a federal bill. We look at state issues specifically on how they affect low- and moderate income families.
This is a law that cuts taxes across the board, but disproportionately on people and corporations with high incomes. It pays for some of those tax cuts — but not all of them — with cuts to federal programs that serve low income families.
We don't have a ton of wealthy people in Louisiana. We don't have a lot of huge, national corporations, so the tax cuts are mostly going to people out of state. We do have a lot of poor people who need things like food assistance, and healthcare, and those are the programs being cut. The main concern that we have is how this changes the relationship between the federal and the state government.
On his impressions of how the Big Beautiful Bill passed through Congress
This was a party line vote, it was passed without any democratic support. I think the biggest priority for the corporate class in Washington who donate to a lot of campaigns and hold a lot of power, their top priority was renewing the tax cuts that passed through Donald Trump's first term. the problem is if you just renew the tax cuts then you're really going to blow the deficits way out of proportion.
On his impression of how the Bill will affect SNAP benefits and healthcare
The SNAP program has about 850,000 people in Louisiana and its for people that mostly are working to give them enough money to put food on the table, the way it works is that the state and the federal government split the costs fifty-fifty, with the benefits one-hundred percent paid for by the federal government.
