Senator James David Cain discusses Stelly Tax Plan on Legal Lines with Locke Mer [5:01-10:03]

me though. And the reason is, is you want to maintain independence, you don't want to be influenced improperly. I mean, I know you're not saying that every lobbyist is- Oh, they're all good. They're all good. They've got to tell the truth. They lied. They wouldn't be there five minutes. They're all good people. But I just don't think that's the way we as legislators, I saw legislators when I first got here and they say, let's, here's going to take us to lunch today. Well, I said, you know, I think they didn't think that was right. Maybe that's one reason I got overweight. I went to the movies and ate hamburgers. How do you think the process, the political process needs to change? You've been there a while. We've got to get more independent of the governor. I tried to pass a lot of bills, the last few years to where we can be more independent from the governor. Well, we need to take more, name more, name more of the board, to send it to the Senate. Now we can firm them. I tried to do this and my good friend, Jay Darden, fought him and fought him up and down and good friend of mine because he was a floor leader for Boston. I've had Jay on the show. That's right. He was a floor leader for Foster. Now that same person said, well, we need to get more independent of the governor because he's down in a good team with, with, with, with, uh, black hope. So I guess his two doctors being gourd. I mean, I've been friend with all the governors. I mean, you know, throughout the came in with Edwards, I've seen them come and go. I've got, they've been some good governors and they've been some that I wouldn't, you know, I'm not going to say which one, but some is just, you just couldn't get a decision out of them. That's one thing. And some that you just couldn't, one or two, you just, one of me just couldn't hardly believe. Really? That we forget who that is. You know? You know? Tell me, uh, then you're saying maintain independence. How would that be accomplished, legislation? Well, legislation, we, we need to take more. So you've got the executive branch, you did, she'll in the, in the, in the legislative. The executive branch in Louisiana, let's describe what they do for the folks. Well, the executive branch is, you know, is, is the governor and that group and it runs executive offices and so forth and sets up all the different heads of the different departments. Then you got the legislative branch, that's the house representative in the senators. And then you've got the judicial, the judge and so forth. But the executive branch has got so strong in Louisiana that they just manhandled the legislature. In fact, one of the strongest governorships in the entire United States is on the floor. It is. And they manhandled the legislature. They handpicked their, uh, head of the house, head of the Senate, the legislators ought to be doing that. But we don't. We cave into them. Well, I know that there was a dispute for a while between Hankel and, and Governor Blanca is, um, well chosen for sure, but ultimately, uh, Governor Blanca won because she's a governor and, and, and, and because she has the power to, to capital outlay projects, projects in your district. Very fun. Line out of veto. Pass out the money. Pass out the money. And, and, and we as legislators have to take more control. I tried to pass lots of legislation about three years ago about this, didn't pass one piece. Well, no governor's going to allow you to reduce their value. No, you can't do that. And it's understandable. And the four leaders of that particular governor, which one of them was Jay Darden, my good friend, bought it. Same one. Same now. We'll say, well, we need to take more power back. It's just like, again, it's, when you're there, but it's sad in a way. But one of the things, my pet peeve right now is taxes. People are taxed and death, and that's why I traveled the state and, and fought the income taxes that Stelly, so-called, put on it. They did put them on it. Let me tell you this. It's very important that the public knows this. They sold. They told the people it was going to be tax neutral. Tax neutral. Well, that was tax neutral the first year, but you know why it didn't start the June 1st. It already paid our income tax, see? That was a trick right there. All right. What we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and follow up with that discussable taxes on the next segment. This is Locke Meredith with Legal Lines, got Senator Canon, we're going to talk about taxes. Welcome back to Legal Lines. I'm Locke Meredith. I'm very pleased to have on the show Senator James Cain. He's a Louisiana State Senator, again, Senator Thais. Yes, sir. Let's talk about the taxes. I know that's a sore subject for you. There it is. You know, the people were told on the stepplet plant, it would be tax neutral. Every time they open it. Let's define the stepplet plant real quick. Stepplet plant is making up the income tax, putting the brackets higher, taking all your itemized deductions away from it. If you give to your church, you can't take it off your income tax. If you've got a home mortgage, you can't take it off your income tax. I tried to tell the public that and we went out of the state and tried to tell they say we're helping the poor people, but we gave the poor people $143 million in food stamps every year. They are already eating with food stamps, which is good. They deserve them. They needed them. Absolutely. But they don't pay sales tax on that. So what we did, we shift a burden from one group of people to another group of people, and that group of people is the guy that makes between $30 and $150,000. Two school teachers, a school teacher, and maybe their wife works at Walmart, they're going to really get an income tax, they're going to go way up this year. In this goes in effect this year?