bill, good morning to you. bill: good morning. why is that a favorable view given the clineat we re looking at now? we haven t endorsed any proposal. we present our budget in march. what we have told every state agency is we re not raising taxes in the state of louisiana. we want to hear their ideas and proposals, college leaders have suggested this is one potential solution. what we have done to state in louisiana, we have cut spending 26 percent since i ve taken office, we cut thousands of government positions, we privatized services for example group home services and certain insurance risk management functions, and in other words, trying to be more efficient, do more with less. we ve also enacted while i ve been governor tax cuts on things like getting rid of the taxes on businesses utility costs, debt, equipment, the largest income cut in our state hiss refplt we re not like washington, d.c., we re not going to print money or increase taxes. this is an important point, the bu
louisiana had the fifth largest growth, employers.com second we re the second best in overall economic performance. every state you mentioned, every state in the country, has a fundamental decision to make and in this recession, do we raise taxes or do we make the tough decisions in our state capitols. in louisiana i made a firm commitment, we re not raising any of our taxes as long as i m governor, we re not shifting this burden to our families and businesses. one of the reasons the cato institute made us an i grade. bill: you have a budget shortfall of $1.7 billion. that s peanuts compared to california. but how is louisiana going to get out of its mess? how will these other states get out of their mess? or in the end, do all 50 states end up pitching in? you know, the $1.6 billion shortfall we face is for fiscal year 2011. we re going to have to do like every family and business, tighten our belt, do more with less, an we ve already seen that. for example in the state of louisiana