January 11-14, 2015
Jan 11 10:20 DFL, lobbyists vs. GOP, roads & bridges Jan 12 09:49 SCSU's spring enrollment Jan 12 16:41 NY Times almost gets it right Jan 13 03:27 Will MnSCU Trustees walk the walk? Jan 13 03:31 DFL, Move MN and transportation Jan 13 18:06 "Most Partisan President" in history Jan 14 02:54 Long-term plan, immediate crises Jan 14 13:20 Transportation battle lines drawn
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
DFL, lobbyists vs. GOP, roads & bridges
The Minnesota legislature is less than a week in and Gov. Dayton is already picking a fight with Republicans. The next time he picks a fight, he should know what he's talking about. After reading this article , it's apparent he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to transportation or economics:
Gov. Mark Dayton and transportation funding advocates say Minnesota can raise billions of dollars by adding a new tax to gasoline sales. But that tax could bring in less money than projected if the price at the pump stays at current low levels.
"The number on the revenue side of it does deserve additional scrutiny given the present price of gasoline," Dayton said Friday. "If it stays at $2.25 a gallon for the next couple years, that revenue is going to be less."
Minnesota already applies a 28.7-cent tax to every gallon of gasoline sold, a tax that's the same whether that gallon costs $2, $4 or somewhere in between. But Dayton wants to raise more revenue by also applying a 6.5 percent sales tax to fuel sales. That tax would bring in different money per gallon depending on the price of gasoline: $0.13 per gallon with $2 gas, $0.21 per gallon with $3.25 gas, and $0.26 with $4 gas.
Dayton and advocacy group Move MN say they can raise $5.8 billion over 10 years by applying this sales tax to gasoline and also increasing license tab fees car owners pay every year. But Dayton said Friday that $5.8 billion figure was based on the assumption of $3.25 gasoline. That means the transportation package would bring in less than $5.8 billion if gas remained below $3.25. It could also bring in more than that if gas goes above $3.25.
Theoretically, Gov. Dayton is right. Theoretically, revenues will be greatest when prices are higher. Unfortunately for Gov. Dayton and his special interest allies, revenues aren't collected in the theoretical realm. They're collected in reality.
High gas prices mean more tax revenue per gallon sold -- but also fewer gallons sold. Low gas prices mean the opposite situation.
Speaker Kurt Daudt put it best:
"We've taken money from Minnesotans to pay for those basics, we've spent too much of it on extras, and now we're going to go back to Minnesotans and ask them for more money for basics?" House Speaker Kurt Daudt said Wednesday.
The DFL is famous for spending lots of money on things we don't need. That's because the DFL is famous for paying off their special interest allies with the taxpayers' money. That won't cut it with this GOP majority.
Republicans and other critics have opposed Dayton's proposal to raise taxes on gasoline, saying the state should reprioritize spending from mass transit to roads and bridges first.
Let's be blunt about this. Minnesota is spending too much money on transit, trolley cars and light rail. Minnesota isn't spending enough on roads and bridges. Further, I'm highly skeptical of the experts' prediction that we'll need between $2,000,000,000 and $6,000,000,000 to fix roads and bridges in the next decade.
I want a detailed list of all the bridges 30 years or older that need repair in the next decade. Then I want a list of trunk highways that are old that'll need repair in the next decade. Further, each of those lists should be prioritized based on the amount of traffic that they're currently experiencing and based on the projected amount of traffic they'll experience based on population growth.
It isn't good enough to say 'this bridge is old. Let's fix it.' If traffic is light, then it isn't as high of a priority as if it's a high traffic bridge. Gov. Dayton, the DFL and the transportation lobbyists need to learn that taxpayers aren't their political ATMs. They can't subject taxpayers to one tax increase after another.
Posted Sunday, January 11, 2015 10:20 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 11-Jan-15 01:52 PM
Gary:
A couple of questions or points you might have missed.
One, will the gas pumps show the price of gas before sales tax or afterwords? Thus if gas is $2.00 a gallon will it show $2.13 on the pump with the sales tax?
Two, a lot of people especially when the price of gas was $3 plus means that some people will pull out their credit card and think okay I have four dollars to pump. If the sales tax isn't on the pump price then I will have to take that into account when pumping in order to get a charge approved.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Chad Q at 12-Jan-15 07:27 AM
When will MN start making mass transit users pay for mass transit instead of increasing the taxes and fees driver have to pay in order to pay for the boondoggle mass transit projects? Every time MTC talks about a fare increase, the welfare rights crowd gets all whipped up and nothing increase except the cost to drivers.
Also, I work for a company located just across the boarder in WI. Right now gas is cheaper in MN than it is in WI by about a nickel so I buy my gas in MN. When MN starts adding sales tax to gas, I'll be buying my gas in WI along with a lot of other people. It will backfire on MN just like the tobacco tax has.
Comment 3 by J. Ewing at 12-Jan-15 09:27 AM
To a DFLer, everything has top priority and nothing can ever be cut out of the budget. Spending must always increase and if the budget, er, wish-list doesn't balance out, we just need more revenue. Pretty simple, really.
Comment 4 by Gary Gross at 12-Jan-15 10:02 AM
Ronald Reagan once said that the closest thing we'll see to eternal life on earth is a government program. Once again, he's right.
SCSU's spring enrollment
What's Up/Down With Spring Enrollment?
by Silence Dogood
Classes begin today at SCSU and the current enrollment numbers for Spring semester do not look good. In fact, you might say that they look terrible! As of this morning there were 4,773 FYE registered for classes. Last spring, the final enrollment for Spring semester was 5,294, which means that enrollment is down 521 FYE, which corresponds to a drop of 9.8%. With Senior-to-Sophomore (S2S) enrollments still to come in and some graduate courses still to be enrolled later this semester, the numbers will improve somewhat. Of course, there are always an additional few students who transfer in or just register late. However, these numbers will not affect the overall enrollment significantly.
Last spring, there was a total S2S enrollment of 126 FYE. This fall there were 7.0% fewer FYE in the S2S program. If we assume the same drop for spring, this would translate into 117 additional FYE and reduce the decline to 404 FYE. This fall, there were 6.3% more graduate FYE than the previous fall. If we assume the same increase for this spring from last spring, this would give a total of 567 FYE. Currently, there are 516 FYE graduate students registered so this difference would add 51 FYE and reduce the decline to 353 FYE.
If the spring enrollment is 353 FYE lower than the previous spring, this would give an FYE enrollment for spring semester of 4,941. When the spring enrollment is added to the FYE enrollment for summer (918) and Fall (5,806) would give a total FYE enrollment for FY15 of 11,665. The figure below shows the FYE enrollment by fiscal year from FY2008 through FY2015.
The enrollment decline in the Summer was 91 FYE. The enrollment decline for Fall semester was 272 FYE. If the decline for spring is 353 FYE, this would bring the total decline for FY15 to 716 FYE. In FY14, the total FYE enrollment was 12,381 FYE, as a result a loss of 716 FYE corresponds to an annual enrollment decline of 5.8%.
The following figure shows the percentage change in enrollment from FY2008 through FY2015:
The data in the figure shows that from FY2008 through FY2010 the enrollment grew modestly. In FY2011, enrollment dropped by a small amount. Considering that the enrollment was up 3.7% the previous year, the drop is actually much more substantial and may have been an omen of what was to come. The enrollment drops of 6.9%, 6.4%, 5.1% and 5.8% for FY2011 through FY2015 are unprecedented in the history of MnSCU and represents a loss of 3,445 FYE corresponding to a five-year drop of an ASTOUNDING 22.7%!
To put this into perspective, the entire enrollment at Southwest Minnesota State University in FY14 was 3,678 FYE. In five years, SCSU has lost equivalent to 94% of the entire enrollment at Southwest Minnesota State University! Based on the administration's own enrollment projections, SCSU's decline will pass the total enrollment of Southwest next year.
As the enrollment was declining at SCSU, everyone kept hearing about 'right sizing' without ever hearing what the 'right size' was. Now, everyone is hearing about growing programs and increasing enrollment. All I can figure is that we must have somehow overshot the 'right size.' No one still seems to know what the 'right size' is but it must be larger that SCSU's current size.
Since 'reorganization' in FY2011, which was done to both cut $14,000,000 from the university's budget and create an academic structure laying the foundation for an improved university, enrollment has been in what can only be described as a "free fall." This enrollment drop has led to the current budget shortfall for FY15 of an estimated $9,542,000 based on only a 4.5% decline in enrollment. Recently, Vice President for Finance and Administration Tammy McGee stated that each percent decline in enrollment has a cost of approximately $750,000 in lost revenue. With the actual decline looking like it will be over 5.5%, it is not outside the realm of possibility that FY15's budget deficit will be significantly bigger than projected.
Without a doubt, substantial cuts will have to be made even if the enrollment reverses. There simply isn't enough in the University's reserves to continue covering business as usual. An important question: Has there ever been a time when cuts led to an increase in enrollment? The last time the budget was cut, it triggered the current enrollment decline. Is anyone willing to take a bet that enrollment will increase AFTER another $10,000,000 is cut from the budget?
Unfortunately, the path going forward is all too clear. SCSU will be smaller, average class sizes will increase, and the number of course offerings will decrease. On the bright side, there should be a lot of housing available around campus, traffic during class changes will be less, and finding a parking space should be a lot easier. Who said change isn't good?
Posted Monday, January 12, 2015 9:49 AM
No comments.
NY Times almost gets it right
When I first skimmed this NY Times article , I thought it was a decent article, in part because of this analysis:
Nonetheless, there will be demand for an alternative to Mr. Bush, even from within the so-called Republican establishment. Since Friday, attention has focused on Mitt Romney, who said in a meeting of top advisers and donors that he was considering a third run.
But the more compelling challenger may be Scott Walker, the battle-hardened governor of Wisconsin. He has made moves toward running, and on paper, he's the type of candidate who should deeply concern Mr. Bush.
A study of the 2012 election suggests that Jeb Bush has nothing to fear from moving to the right during the primary season.
Unlike the flawed but better-known conservatives, Mr. Walker has the potential to have broad appeal throughout the Republican Party. Mr. Walker, born in Colorado Springs, is an evangelical Christian who defeated public employee unions in a high-profile battle over collective bargaining rights and who made big budget cuts in a state that has voted for Democrats in seven consecutive presidential elections.
First, I disagree that Gov. Bush "has nothing to fear from moving to the right" during the primaries. He isn't a conservative anymore. Admittedly, he had a reasonably conservative record as governor but he's wandered quite a bit since leaving office almost a decade ago.
The analysis is right in that Gov. Walker's appeal is substantial for quite a few reasons, starting with the fact that he's taken on some rather large challenges and won. It's also because Gov. Walker's supporters across the nation feel passionately about him and would run through brick walls for him. That's something that other GOP presidential candidates can't tout, including Rand Paul.
Ron Paul's supporters were willing to run through walls for him but Rand Paul isn't like his father. He's a polished politician, not the conscience of the Libertarian Party.
Yet unlike most conservative heroes, Mr. Walker has the record, resume and temperament of a candidate who could attract significant support from the establishment.
In short, Gov. Walker has a substantial list of conservative accomplishments. Many of those accomplishments are reforms that Wisconsin's needed for years. People think that Gov. Walker's only accomplishment is union reform. Few people talk about his expansion of charter schools and school choice options.
Those are accomplishments that translate well to the national stage.
This is where they went wrong:
Some question whether he has the charisma to distinguish himself in a crowded field. He could end up like the former governor Tim Pawlenty, another Midwesterner, who was thought to be a strong challenger to Mr. Romney in 2012 but who ultimately failed to gain traction in Iowa.
Gov. Walker is nothing like Gov. Pawlenty. Gov. Pawlenty's biggest accomplishment wasn't really an accomplishment. Gov. Pawlenty prevented the DFL from raising taxes through the roof. It's the right thing to do but it isn't an accomplishment.
The other difference between Gov. Pawlenty and Gov. Walker is that people supported Gov. Pawlenty but Gov. Walker's supporters would run through walls for him. Simply put, the charisma argument isn't credible.
Posted Monday, January 12, 2015 9:50 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 12-Jan-15 05:09 PM
Gary:
Lets not forget towards the end of this second Pawlenty had done a lot of things that had made him move left.
* Support lots of mass transit projects.
* Embracing global warming.
* Going along with a deal that helped cram extra spending down our throats once Dayton got elected.
I can think of a few others. It got so bad I actually had asked the Pawlenty campaign to refund money I had donated to his campaigns so I wasn't ready to go through a wall for him in 2012.
Jeb Bush to put it mildly is much worse than Pawlenty.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 12-Jan-15 07:00 PM
Walter, TPaw actually moved right on global warming, thanks in large part to Mike Beard explaining things to him.
Comment 3 by walter hanson at 13-Jan-15 01:33 PM
Gary:
Bio disel and those silly requirements for a larger than possible renewable energy requirements started under Tim. Tim laid the foundation to have those silly things be effecting us each day and made the environmental people think they are right on everything which is why they are really destroying our lives now!
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Will MnSCU Trustees walk the walk?
Do The MnSCU Trustees "Walk the Talk?"
by Silence Dogood
Over semester break, things quiet down on campus. This allows time for things that you just might not have time for ordinarily. Just for fun, I was poking around on the website for the Office of Finance and Administration.
If you click on the second link on the left side for "Budget" it takes you to the following page:
On the right side of the page if you click on the first link "MnSCU Information", you are taken to the following page:
Clicking on the link for the "Minnesota State Colleges and University System Financial Overview," the following document is opened:
While this might make for interesting historical reading, a document that is nearly four years out of date might not be too useful. Hopefully, there IS a document, which is a bit more current. However, having nothing better to do, I decided to read on anyway.
Slide 3 in the presentation lists the following bullet points under "Financial health and compliance."
The four bullet points listed in the slide say what the Board of Trustees intends to do regarding "Financial health and compliance." Essentially, this is "The Talk."
Not having been present for this presentation to the House Higher Education Policy and Finance Committee on February 21, 2011 and without further explanation, one can only guess that the first bullet point means that each college/university will sink or swim on its own.
The second bullet point says that there will be a framework for "on-going monitoring of financial condition at each college and university." The third bullet point "defines required remediation if performance levels are not achieved." Unfortunately, the presentation gives no details of the "framework" for monitoring, the specific "performance levels" expected, or what is meant by "required remediation." Essentially, this is what is known in the education community as "administrativespeak." 'Administrativespeak' is defined as words which have no meaning so they can be defined as the situation requires and frequently redefined with changed definitions.
The last bullet point is the only one that is specified in the presentation. The Composite Financial Index (CFI) offers insights regarding financial strengths and weaknesses. The CFI is calculated from four component measures: return on net assets, operating margin, primary reserve, and viability.
The following figure shows the CFI for SCSU and the average for the MnSCU universities from FY 2008 through FY 2013. Additionally, SCSU's CFI is shown for FY 2014.
In FY11, a 0.8% enrollment decline helped drop SCSU's CFI. The $44,800,000 revenue from building the Integrated Science and Engineering Laboratory Facility (ISELF) greatly inflated the CFI in FY12 and overwhelmed a 6.9% decline in enrollment. The continuing enrollment decline of 6.4% in FY13 began the CFI nosedive. In FY14, the CFI dropped again to a value of 0.07 corresponding to another 5.1% enrollment decline. Since enrollment for FY15 will be down over 5% once again, it is not hard to imagine that the CFI will go even lower. However, it's hard to imagine that a CFI can get much lower than 0.07. Is it even possible to have a negative CFI?
The question is, will the MnSCU Board of Trustees "Walk their Talk" or was it just more 'administrativespeak' on a PowerPoint slide that is meaningless. SCSU's $9,542,000 budget deficit for FY15, reflected in a CFI of 0.07 for FY14, has simply grown too large to continue to ignore.
Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2015 3:27 AM
No comments.
DFL, Move MN and transportation
Now that Gov. Dayton has thrown another of his temper tantrums, it's time to let some of the DFL's front organizations to step forward with wildly foolish proposals. This time, Move MN is the DFL front organization that's proposing to raise taxes without thinking things through :
Senate Transportation Chairman Scott Dibble, D-Minneapolis, said he will release his plan in coming days, but unlike the GOP it is expected to include a transit component. It likely will include some form of a gasoline tax increase and a Twin Cities tax for transit.
Dibble said his plan will look a lot like one Dayton has sketched out and that transportation advocates in Move MN propose. The Move MN plan mixes a wholesale gasoline sales tax increase with higher vehicle license fees. Also included is an additional tax in the Twin Cities to fund transit needs there.
According to KSTP's reporting Sunday, Move MN's plan would raise taxes and fees by $8,500,000,000 over the next decade. That's approximately $1,700,000,000 this biennium. That's on top of the $2,400,000,000 increase in taxes and fees from the 2013 session. That might be the most frightening news of the article if not for this:
Estimates for transportation needs in the next 10 years range from $2 billion to $6 billion.
That's frightening! I don't want estimates on what Minnesota's transportation needs for the next decade are. I want a detailed list of aging roads and bridges that need repair. I want that list prioritized by which roads and bridges are oldest, which roads and bridges that have the highest expected traffic over the next decade.
That 'estimate' sounds more like a lobbyist's wish list than it sounds like a responsible list of high priority project that Minnesota needs. A responsible estimate would say Minnesota's transportation needs are between $2,000,000,000 and $2,400,000,000. A reckless estimate, like the kind I expect from Gov. Dayton and the DFL, would estimate Minnesota's transportation system needing between $2,000,000,000 and $6,000,000,000.
Then there's Move MN's estimate. Move MN's estimate that Minnesota's transportation system needs $8,500,000,000 is what I'd expect if I grabbed a pedestrian off the street, got him drunk, put him in a blindfold, then told him to throw darts to determine what Minnesota's transportation system needs are. That's likely to be just as accurate as Move MN's estimate.
Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2015 3:31 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 13-Jan-15 04:00 PM
Why are they not talking about adding fees or increasing fares on the blight rail and bus services? Why are drivers always footing the bill for every liberal transit wet dream? And why am I as a Twin Cities resident having to fork over more sales tax money for a public transit system I never use? My sales tax in St. Paul will be 9% shortly.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 13-Jan-15 05:29 PM
Chad, it's time to join forces with other like-minded people in defeating Move MN's & the DFL's tax increases. It's time to pressure legislators & write LTEs complaining about all the tax increases you're getting hit with.
Finally, tell people you won't hesitate in moving out of the Twin Cities if the tax increases keep coming.
"Most Partisan President" in history
In 2007-08, then-Sen. Obama campaigned as America's first post-partisan presidential candidate. In 2004, he said he envisioned a nation not composed of red states and blue states. He envisioned a return to the US becoming the United States. President Obama lied to us. Here's what we got instead:
Matt Lewis nailed it in this article :
[The Keystone XL Pipeline]project has been mired in controversy and delay for years. But it actually has supporters on both sides of the aisle, including labor unions on the left and free-market conservatives on the right. It's largely just liberal environmentalists who are pressuring Democrats to hold things up.
That's more proof that President Obama earned the title of being the "Most-Partisan President" in US history. He's done more to stand in the way of progress than Jimmy Carter could've done in 4 presidential terms.
Here's the part that Lewis especially got right:
Obama has the ability to rhetorically present both sides of every issue. But he also has a habit of ultimately coming down on the left side . He's a liberal at heart. But there's more to it than that. Obama fans are loathe to admit it, but the president can be a divider, and an obstructionist.
It's foolish to think that President Obama plays things straight down the middle. That isn't him. He's a hardline leftist who hates compromise. We've seen, in fact, through his delaying the employer mandate and his executive actions on immigration that he's mostly an autocrat. He isn't a statesman or a diplomat. He's a hardline leftist autocrat at heart.
But Obama's own State Department produced an environmental impact statement long ago green-lighting the project. "The central finding in the draft environmental impact statement," The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza told NPR's Terry Gross last year, "was, if you don't build Keystone, the Canadians will sell this stuff anyway, they'll build pipelines to their east coast, to their west coast, and they'll send it to the Gulf of Mexico via rail, and by the way, sending oil by rail releases a whole lot more greenhouse gas emissions than putting it in a pipeline."
I knew that President Obama's initial explanation for delaying the Keystone XL Pipeline project was dishonest. Pundits at the time said it was just to get past the 2012 election without upsetting the environmental activist wing of the Democratic Party. I immediately said that he wasn't worried about upsetting the environmental activists in the Democratic Party. I said that he did it because he's an environmental activist at heart.
President Obama has given us ample proof that he's the "Most-Partisan President" in US history. It's up to us to believe what our eyes have seen.
Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2015 6:06 PM
No comments.
Long-term plan, immediate crises
This St. Cloud Times article highlights a flaw in President Potter's plan to revitalize St. Cloud State's enrollment and budget crises. Here's what tipped things off:
Potter said innovative thinking will help develop new programs and revitalize existing programs.
There's nothing wrong with developing new programs or revitalizing existing programs. It's just that creating new programs takes time. With a $9,542,000 deficit and with enrollment down more than 20% since its peak in FY2010, there's a need for a quick turnaround.
Starting a new program literally takes years. It's impossible to start a new program without figuring out if there's a demand for the program. If there isn't a demand, obviously, then it's foolish to take another step. If there is a demand, then the next step is to hire a person to lead the program. That requires a search, which takes time. After that, the person hired to lead this new program needs to develop the course schedule, then develop the curriculum for each of those courses.
Developing the curriculum takes quite a bit of time because you're developing curriculum for everything from freshman-level classes through graduation classes. That doesn't include the classes that students need for their major that are taught in other departments.
In other words, President Potter's so-called solution to this deficit crisis would take 3-5 years at minimum. That isn't a solution. That's smooth-sounding spin that doesn't fix the problem. There's a good chance President Potter's solution would pass the buck to his successor.
Additional time is required to market the program and build a solid student base. In the end, there is no guarantee that after "you build it, they will come" to SCSU. At that point, it's still a hit-or-miss proposition. A former supporter of the aviation program noted that the aviation program curriculum is still on the books at SCSU. It could be restarted relatively quickly. Better yet, with the major airline pilot shortage and the immediate demand for drone pilots, it's logical that SCSU consider restarting the aviation program. It would quickly boost SCSU's enrollment. The payroll and other costs of the program are modest, meaning the program would likely quickly reduce SCSU's deficit.
It's important to note that this deficit isn't a problem. It's a crisis :
Potter says the school's budget health depends on how much money the Legislature grants the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System.
That's a frightening statement, especially in light of the fact that President Potter has made a series of questionable financial decisions. His lease with the Wedum Foundation has cost SCSU $7,700,000 over the first 5 years of the contract.
President Potter's insistence that SCSU's declining enrollment was the result of an intentional right-sizing cost SCSU millions of dollars in tuition revenues since FY2010. It's worse considering the fact that President Potter is clearly indicating that this wasn't an intentional right-sizing, that it was just his administration's inability to right the enrollment ship.
Here's the final criticism I'll make in this post. When President Potter told the St. Cloud Times' Editorial Board that the contract with the JA Wedum Foundation was a success, it highlighted the fact that President Potter was either being exceptionally dishonest or he was totally clueless.
President Potter knew this major deficit was heading in SCSU's direction. This didn't come as a surprise. At minimum, it's shouldn't have been a surprise. Enrollment was tanking. President Potter knew that the Wedum Foundation lease was costing the University millions of dollars a year because that's what it did while it was open. In 2013, the legislature passed a tuition freeze for MnSCU universities.
President Potter is attempting to spin his way out of getting blamed for his mismanagement of SCSU. History will write the final chapter on his legacy. I wouldn't bet history will be kind considering how frequently he mishandled SCSU's financial responsibilities.
Posted Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:54 AM
No comments.
Transportation battle lines drawn
It didn't take long for the DFL to define themselves on transportation:
Then there's Gov. Dayton's fallback position on everything:
'I say $6 billion and they say nothing?' a frustrated Dayton said last week during the press conference at which he made his 'pure fantasy' remark about Republicans' proposal. 'This is not a beginning of a sensible conversation.'
Tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. That's the DFL's solution for everything. In 2013, they raised taxes and fees by $2,400,000,000. In 2014, they repealed some of the taxes they'd raised in 2013, then had the audacity to call it a tax cut. FYI- That didn't fly with voters. They returned Republicans to the majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
With the 2015 session just a week old, the Senate DFL has proposed raising taxes to fund their transportation wish list. Let's be clear about this. Republicans want to focus on fixing roads and bridges. The DFL wants to raises a plethora of taxes to repair roads and bridges, pay for trolley cars, fund transit expansion and pay for light rail projects.
Republicans a) don't want to raise taxes and b) want to focus on roads and bridges. The DFL wants to raise the gas tax (even though it won't fund the projects they're proposing) to fix roads and bridges and increase license tabs and the metro sales tax to pay for transit projects.
In 2010, Mark Dayton criticized Tom Horner for pushing a cigarette tax increase, calling it a regressive tax. At the time, Gov. Dayton said Minnesota needed a more progressive tax system. Back then, Gov. Dayton said that he'd "tax the rich" but he'd cut taxes for the middle class.
There's now a plethora of proof that Gov. Dayton lied. BIGTIME. The rich got hit alright. Unfortunately for the middle class and the working poor, they've gotten hit the hardest with the Dayton-DFL tax and fee increases.
Minnesota's middle class and working poor can't afford the DFL's tax increases. They're taxed too much already.
Posted Wednesday, January 14, 2015 1:20 PM
No comments.
