Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) last night opened a “fiscal session” of the Louisiana legislature with an address on the state’s finances and how to approach the $1.6 billion hole in its budget. During the speech, Jindal vowed to veto any tax increases, saying, “Tax increases kill jobs. Tax increases kill opportunities. Tax increases hurt economic development. Tax increases hurt our ability to attract new businesses into Louisiana.”

But as the Advocate noted, “the only real tax hike proposed thus far filed is an increase in the state tobacco tax”:

House Bill 63 by state Rep. Harold Ritchie would increase the 36-cent state sales tax on a pack of cigarettes by 70 cents. The state’s tobacco tax is among the lowest in the nation.

In the past, Jindal has explicitly voiced opposition to raising the cigarette tax, even though Louisiana’s cigarette tax is the second lowest in the country, after Virginia. According to the Louisiana Budget Project, the proposed increase in the cigarette tax would raise about $200 million, while also lowering health care costs. It would also provide almost twice the savings of Jindal’s proposal to raise tuition and fees for Louisiana’s college students:

Tucked in the pages of the $24.9 billion spending plan are provisions for spending more than $98 million that Jindal hopes the state’s colleges will get through tuition hikes on students. Separate legislation would need to be passed to enact the cost increases…The increases would come on top of increased costs for students already set to take effect this fall and more increases for at least four additional years, under legislation passed last year.

In the last two years, Louisiana has cut $315 million from higher education, even as it charged students more for tuition.

Louisiana’s current tax code is a mess, with 441 different exemptions that cost the state $7 billion per year, several times the size of its current budget shortfall. One exemption alone — allowing residents to deduct the amount they paid in federal taxes from their state tax bill — costs the state $643 million per year while overwhelmingly aiding the richest Louisianians. But Jindal has ruled tax increases off the table, deciding that the more prudent course is to force students to cover the cost of the state’s budget woes.

For several days, the midwest and southern U.S. have been pounded by deadly storms, which have brought tornadoes and widespread flooding. Today, a levee in Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, failed in at least four locations, which is “expected to send flood waters from the Black River racing into a populated but rural area of Butler County.” It is currently unclear how many people will be affected by the flooding, but the threat of the levee failing at another location prompted the evacuation of 1,000 people.

The levee’s failure is a tragic reminder of the sorry state of America’s infrastructure. This particular levee failed a federal inspection in 2008, receiving an “unacceptable” rating from the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers. In the U.S. patchwork levee system, many local communities are responsible for levee upkeep, and this particular community couldn’t afford the cost.

According to the Army Corps of Engineers, nearly ten percent of the levees in the country are expected to fail during a flood event. The Civil Corps. of Engineers gave the U.S. levee system a D- grade in 2009, and estimated that it would take a $50 billion investment to get those levees into adequate shape:

During the past 50 years there has been tremendous development on lands protected by levees. Coupled with the fact that many levees have not been well maintained, this burgeoning growth has put people and infrastructure at risk—the perceived safety provided by levees has inadvertently increased flood risks by attracting development to the floodplain. Continued population growth and economic development behind levees is considered by many to be the dominant factor in the national flood risk equation, outpacing the effects of increased chance of flood occurrence and the degradation of levee condition.

Projected federal spending on levees in the next five years is expected to be just $1.13 billion, leaving a $48.87 billion shortfall in needed funding. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “there are 881 counties — or 28 percent of all counties in the United States — that contain levees or other kinds of flood control and protection systems.” More than half of the U.S. population resides in those counties.

Overall, the U.S. has about $2.2 trillion in unaddressed infrastructure needs. The Congressional Progressive Caucus budget that was released earlier this month includes $30 billion “as start-up costs for a national infrastructure bank that would leverage private financing to help rebuild America’s public capital stock,” and budgets for $1.2 trillion in public investment over the next five years.

Earlier this year, Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) released a bill called the CAP act, which would prevent the government from spending more than 20.6 percent of GDP in any given year (unless the cap is waived by a supermajority vote in Congress). As I laid out at the time, actually adhering to this cap would require huge cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and would keep federal spending below where it was during the Reagan administration, even though there are now tens of millions more seniors reliant on Social Security and Medicare than there were in the 1980′s.

Today, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced his support for the CAP act, but at the same time said that he wants to protect Social Security and Medicare:

“Today, I will be announcing my support for two proposals that I believe provide a good starting point and framework from which we can move forward,” he will say, according to excerpts released by his office. “But let me be also clear — one of my top priorities will be to make sure that whatever final debt fix emerges, it will keep our promises to our seniors by protecting Social Security and Medicare. I believe we can do this and cut our debt and deficits over time.”

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, here’s the effect of the CAP act on Social Security and Medicare:

In dollar terms, mandatory programs would be cut by nearly $630 billion in 2021. Social Security would be cut by $237 billion, Medicare by $161 billion, and Medicaid by $105 billion. As noted earlier, from 2013 through 2021, the cumulative cuts would total about $1.3 trillion in Social Security, $856 billion in Medicare, and $547 billion in Medicaid. If, instead of following the Corker-McCaskill formula for automatic cuts, all programs were cut by the same percentage, then all programs would be cut 14 percent in 2021 — or one of every seven dollars. Over the 2013-2021 period, the cuts would total $904 billion in Social Security, $602 billion in Medicare, and $386 billion in Medicaid.

As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein put it, the CAP act is “arguably the most radically conservative reform that could be made to the federal budget. More extreme, by far, than Paul Ryan’s plan.” Yet, lawmakers think that they can enact it while simultaneously protecting the largest, most important federal programs. Corker announced yesterday that he wants to attach the CAP act to legislation that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling.