3 Great Bills from the 2025 Legislative Session

Musings on the Legislature #17

Hello all,

We are now three full weeks into the 2025 Legislative session in Louisiana, and we here at the Louisiana First Standard plan to continue our coverage of the many goings at the State Capitol for the next six weeks.

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the Louisiana Freedom Caucus’s 2025 Legislative Summit dinner, and I was grateful to hear about the many bills that Louisiana’s top “Louisiana First” legislators are proposing in this session. I might make a post soon about my solid experience at this political event, so stay tuned for that.

Last week, we reviewed three of the worst bills from this current legislative session. Therefore, I thought it would be fair to make another post today detailing three fantastic bills from this session.

Without further ado, let’s look at three great bills from Louisiana’s 2025 legislative session:

#1 SB 117 by Sen. Blake Miguez (R - District 22)

State Senator Blake Miguez is undoubtedly one of the top “Louisiana First” members of the Louisiana State Senate. Miguez’s bill (SB 117) will become a landmark step in the effort to “Make Louisiana Healthy Again”. In his bill, Sen. Miguez plans to prohibit Louisiana’s public school from serving ultra-processed foods to Louisiana students by the 2027-2028 school year.

The ultra-processed food that Sen. Miguez’s legislation refers to includes the following extremely harmful ingredients: aspartame, blue dye 1 & 2, red dye 40, brominated vegetable oil, and more.

Her all of the harmful ingredients that SB 117 specifically lists:

D. For the purposes of this Section, "ultra-processed food" means a food or beverage that contains one or more of the following ingredients:

(1) Aspartame. (2) Blue dye (3) Blue dye (4) Brominated vegetable oil. (5) Cottonseed oil. (6) Grapeseed oil. (7) Green dye (8) Potassium bromate. (9) Propylparaben. (10) Red dye 3. (11) Red dye 40. (12) Safflower oil. (13) Titanium dioxide. (14) Yellow dye 5. (15) Yellow dye 6.

This common-sense bill is very much needed in Louisiana as our state’s childhood obesity rate (~22%) is well above the national average (~17%).

Fortunately, the LA State Senate unanimously passed this bill 38-0 last week, and now the Louisiana State House is set to vote on this bill in the coming weeks.

Once this bill likely passes the State House, Governor Landry is expected to sign this bill as he has publicly supported the “Make America Healthy Again” movement in recent months.

#2: HB 184 by Rep. Chuck Owen (R - District 30)

One of the top “Louisiana First” representatives in the Louisiana House is state representative Chuck Owen. If you’ve followed the Louisiana First Standard for a while now, then you’ve probably see that he is also a guest writer for The Hayride blog. So, I enjoy sharing his articles in my “5 Intriguing articles from The Hayride” series.

The bill that we’re going to briefly look at today is Rep. Owen’s HB 184. This legislation will look to give tax deductions to individuals receiving a hardship distribution from their retirement account due to a terminal illness.

While retirement is not always a political subject, the unfortunate reality is that the current tax code is not super friendly to people suffering from deadly illnesses. Right now, anyone who takes out a retirement distribution from his personal IRA or 401(k) account to pay for his terminal illness will be subject to incomes taxes (unless they’re taking out Roth IRA/401(k) contributions).

Starting this year, Louisiana individual income tax rate is 3% for all earned income. Therefore, this bill would exempt individuals from the burden of Louisiana’s state income tax when using their retirement funds to pay for the medical expenses associated with their terminal illness.

We here at the Louisiana First Standard applaud Rep. Owen for his legislation, and we hope that the House Ways and Means Committee will support his legislation during the Committee’s meeting on Monday, May 5th.

Please email the following House Ways and Means Committee members to support HB 184:

-Rep. Julie Emerson: emersonj@legis.la.gov

-rep. Dennis Bamburg: hse005@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Mike Bayham: hse103@legis.la.gov

-rep. Beth Billings: hse056@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Michael Echols: hse014@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Les Farnum: hse033@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Jay Galle: hse104@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Chance Henry: hse042@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Jeremy LaCombe: hse018@legis.la.gov

-rep. Wayne Mahen: mcmahenw@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Joseph Orgeron: hse054@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Roger Wilder: hse071@legis.la.gov

-Rep. Mark Wright: wrightm@legis.la.gov

#3: HB386 by Rep. Raymond Crews (R - District 8)

For the final bill in this list, we are going to look at Rep. Raymond Crews’s legislation HB 386. Similar to legislation that he filed lasty year (2024, HB 714), Rep. Crews’s bill (HB 386) will make gold and silver legal tender in the state of Louisiana.

Over the past 50 years, the US dollar has lost 84% of its value— according to calculations from the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Even more jarring, the US dollar has lost almost 20% of its value in just the past FIVE YEARS ALONE. Inflation has continued to ravage the wealth of Louisiana residents, and something needs to be done to solve this issue at the state and local level.

Thankfully, Rep. Crews has stepped up to the plate again and is willing to take a solid first step in helping Louisiana residents combat the negative effects of inflation. This highly necessary bill (HB 386) will undoubtedly promote the concepts of economic freedom and “sound money” to Louisiana.

Rather than allowing our money to continue losing value, this legislation would allow Louisiana residents to store their money in hard assets like gold and silver and then spend their asset-backed funds in our state.

Last year, I issued a “Call to Action” for the 2024 Legislative session because Rep. Crews proposed a similar bill last year (2024, HB 714) that would have made gold and silver legal tender in Louisiana.

This bill had the support of State Treasurer John Fleming as well as many grassroots patriots across the state. However, this bill did not pass the House Commerce Committee during the 2024 legislative session.

Unfortunately, the banking cartel’s lobbyists has a lot of influence over House Commerce Committee. Last year’s committee voted against this Crews’s common-sense legislation 2-16, and this year’s committee retained all of its members from last year.

Here are how legislators voted on Crews’s bill last year (2024, HB 714):

(“R” stands for a Republican legislator and “D” stands for a Democratic legislator)

-YES: Rep. Danny McCormick (R), rep. Dixon McMakin (R)

-NO: Rep. Polly Thomas (R), Delisha Boyd (D), Kim Carver (R), Vincent Cox (R), Paula Davis (R), Jessica Domangue (R), Kyle Green (D), Troy Hebert (R), Stephanie Hilferty (D), Edmond Jordan (D), Alonzo Knox (D), Jacob Landry (R), Shaun Mena (D), Candance Newell (D), Neil Riser (R), Vinney St. Blanc III (R)

Yes, you read that list above correctly. All but two of the Republicans legislators on this committee teamed up with the all the Democrats on this committee to kill Crews’s legislation last year. This committee is obviously filled with many “Louisiana Last” legislators, and it may be an uphill battle to get this legislation passed in this years’ legislative sesion.

When the time comes, I will likely issue another “call to action” for this legislation. So, please stay tuned when the time comes and email the committee members in the House Commerce Committee whenever HB 386 is scheduled for a committee hearing.

Thank you all for reading, and may Christ Jesus bless the state of Louisiana! Only Louisiana First!