Louisiana Senate rejects budget for voucher program supported by Heritage Foundation affiliate, approves LA DOGE funding
Heritage Foundation creator Paul Weyrich first saw Roe v. Wade as an opportunity to gain support for the religious right's school segregation policies. "School choice," remains a priority for the movement, but their power and control can be seen throughout state and federal government in 2025.
Louisiana's Republican led Senate Finance committee has quietly added $1.5 million into the budget to pay for 10 additional “Louisiana DOGE” positions.
According to a June 1st article in the Louisiana Illuminator, the new positions will help Governor Landry's Division of Administration perform a review of state government services.
Although the LA DOGE taskforce previously indicated in late February, that they would stop violating public transparency laws, and begin informing the public of future meetings, there appear to have been no updates from the committee since LA DOGE announced they would be partnering with the Louisiana Legislative Auditor (LLA) in the hunt for government efficiency.
Given there is no public record of any meetings that have occured since, it is unclear how or why the decision to add 10 new positions to the taskforce was made.
Surprisingly, the Senate has also removed $50 million in public money, which would have expanded private education vouchers. Governor Landry has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Louisiana voucher program, and even ran televised advertisements to show his support.
Landry's plan for school vouchers originally included $94 million dollars for private education. Despite Landry's repeated criticism of Louisiana officials who receive funding from outside sources, such as George Soros, TV ads for Landrys voucher program, we're actually paid for by the Club for Growth. The Club for Growth was founded in 1999 by economist and senior staff member of the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, Stephen Moore.
The Heritage Foundation was established in 1973 by conservative political activists Paul Weyrich and Ed Fuelner with funding from the patriarch of the Coors brewing factory. Heritage has long supported private school voucher programs, and even before the creation of the think tank, Weyrich began working with members of the evangelical Christian right.
The earliest private schools in the southern U.S. were created following Brown v Board of Education and school desegregation by the federal government. These private schools were often referred to as segregation academies, run by leaders of the evangelical church, and often received tax exemption.
In 1970, Green v. Kennedy determined that tax exemption status would be removed from private academies who refuses to desegregate. Paul Weyrich is believed to have first persuaded evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell, to begin backing the anti-abortion movements in 1979 (6 years after Roe vs Wade), as a way for the religious right to gain support.
Amanda Marcotte
Since then, the right's arguments for "religious freedom," has expanded to other policies favored by Republicans, including voucher programs, the right of business owners to refuse service to customers based on sexual orientation, and opposition to the mandatory coverage of hormone therapy and contraception by insurance plans.
The Louisiana Senate has also added hundreds of millions in federal funding to the state Medicaid budget. One of Landry's DOGE taskforce secret meetings involved a sales pitch provided by an employee of Guidehouse Consulting regarding a "deep dive" into Louisiana state spending. The employee, Tara LeBlanc was also the former director of Medicaid for the Louisiana Department of Health.
Previously, several physicians accepting Medicaid were suddenly dropped from one of the largest hospital systems in Louisiana, LCMC. No reason has been given publicly as to why these seemingly unrelated departures seemed to occur all at once, but at least some physicians have since been hired by LCMC's main competitor.
The abrupt loss of several physicians with established patients under LCMC, left many scrambling to find new healthcare providers, and some of LCMC's own staff perplexed as patients began informing them of multiple physician departures.
The loss of these physicians also followed accusations of mismanaged of Medicaid funds by DOGE taskforce partner, Louisiana Legislative Auditor. The program targeted by the LLA was previously overseen by Guidehouse employee Tara LeBlanc for several years. Despite the fact that several of these physicians accepted Medicaid before departing LCMC, Governor Landry's appointee and current leader of LDH, Republican Ralph Abraham, soon began indicating in press interviews that Louisiana would be forced to request more federal spending for Mediciad in Louisiana because no doctors want to accept Medicaid at the current rate.
The federal government has not yet agreed to this increase of $500 million, but if accepted, it will be used to pay physicians and hospitals such as LCMC a higher reimbursement rate for treating Medicaid patients.
It sure would be interesting to find out if any of that $1.5 million in Louisiana spending for DOGE would be going towards contracts with Guidehouse Consulting.
The increase for Federal funding for Louisiana's Mediciad program follows House Republicans passing a bill that would scale back spending for programs such as Medicaid.
While reimbursement rates are not expected to be affected by the changes to Medicaid spending, Medicaid will be implementing work requirements for recipients, and according to Mike Johnson in an interview he gave Sunday, June 1st, “4.8 million people will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so.”
Although it has not received much press coverage, a last minute amendment was also added to the bill passed by the House, which would ban coverage of transgender health care like hormone replacement therapy for approximately 185,000 U.S. adults who rely on Medicaid and Affordable Care Act marketplace plans.
Since Row v. Wade was successfully overturned in 2022, many states have implemented laws preventing access to safe abortions, as well as penalties for healthcare providers that attempt to provide access to this care across state lines. The Heartbeat bill in Georgia is currently forcing a pregnant woman, who was declared legally brain dead, to be kept alive via life support against her family's wishes in order to attempt to carry her fetus to term.
On May 9th, a woman in Texas crossed state lines in order to have a self-managed abortion, was tracked by Texas police using a nationwide network of 83,000 license plate readers.
Johnson's reassurance regarding Medicaid cuts followed similar comments of support for the bill made by other Republicans. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. Ernst responded to concerns "people will die," at a town hall on Friday, June 29th, by reassuring attendees "we are all going to die."
Most of the original members of the religious right prove that Ernst's statement is at least factually correct. Falwell and Weyrich are now deceased, but their movement and vision for America lives on through the money and influence of organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Council for National Policy (CNP), which was also created by Weyrich.
The Southern Poverty Law Center includes CNP as a on their Hatewatch list, and describes it as a highly secretive group where conservatives and extremists mix. The full membership is unknown, but it might be worth noting that both Jeff Landry and Steve Scalise were listed as speakers on an agenda for a 2019 CNP conference.
Although the voucher program for private schools in Louisiana won't be getting that additional $50 million dollars of tax exempt money this year, Weyrich and Falwell would no doubt cheer the level of government control that has been granted to Republican officials in the name of "religious freedom."
