May 6-8, 2011
May 06 01:35 Pawlenty Wins SC Debate May 06 08:57 Take a Hike, Rep. van Hollen May 06 12:02 Outlining the GOP Path To Victory Against Obama, Democrats May 06 15:25 Rep. Winkler's Feeble Constitutional Argument May 06 17:02 Dirty Little Secret Press Conference May 07 21:38 Is Chip the Light at the end of the Tunnel? May 08 01:53 High Praise Indeed May 08 12:08 Dayton's $2.7 Billion Hole May 08 17:37 DFL's Dishonesty, Delusional Thinking Spreading
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Pawlenty Wins SC Debate
Despite what Frank Luntz's focus group said after Thursday night's debate, the guy that stood out with his answers was Tim Pawlenty.
Whether the subject dealt with was national security, jobs, unions or health care, Pawlenty's answers were crisp, well thought out and, most importantly, made sense.
Chris Wallace brought up Gov. Pawlenty's quote about President Obama being weak on national security to springboard into the killing of bin Laden. Wallace then asked whether he still stood by that. Gov. Pawlenty's answer was both gracious and biting.
Gov. Pawlenty said that he gives President Obama credit for signing off on the bin Laden operation. He then noted that that's a tactical decision before talking about how it didn't make sense strategically to side with Iran's mullahs when we should've sided with people fighting for liberty.
Gov. Pawlenty said that President Obama made a major strategic mistake by first declaring that Qaddafi "had to go" before turning operational control over to NATO and the Arab League. I thought the best part of that answer was Gov. Pawlenty saying that President Obama made the statement that Qadaffi had to go before going to NATO, then to the Arab League before only getting 'permission' to do a humanitarian mission a month after making the original statement that Qadaffi had to go.
The simple reality is that you either keep quiet or you keep your promise. Making provocative statements is bad enough. Not keeping your promise just multiplies the problem.
Another issue that Gov. Pawlenty handled well was the issue of the economy. He zeroed in on THE HOT BUTTON ISSUE in South Carolina which is the NLRB's interfering in Boeing's decision to build a second dreamliner plant in South Carolina, saying that the federal government didn't have the authority to tell businesses where they had to locate.
The reality is that there wasn't a single answer where Gov. Pawlenty didn't sound well-informed and armed with a thoughtful solution. Herman Cain played well with the people whose distrust of government impairs their objectivity.
I don't trust government, either, especially the federal government, but I haven't reached that level of cynicism. I don't want Cain dropping out anytime soon because he's a breath of fresh air, the purest anti-Obama in the race. I just don't want him as president. He's undoubtedly a great businessman but he's green on national security issues.
Gov. Pawlenty took a major step forward tonight. Part of that major step forward came at Mitt Romney's expense. Mitt Romney's time is over. The TEA Party simply can't relate to him. He's re-invented himself too many times to be seen as a confident straight shooter.
Brett Baier did an outstanding job tonight as the lead moderator, too. The FNC panels questions were substantive, especially relevant to recent events in the news and, for the most part, not of the gotcha type. If there was any doubt that FNC is a serious news agency, tonight's debate eliminated those doubts.
Posted Friday, May 6, 2011 1:35 AM
Comment 1 by C Quigley at 06-May-11 09:32 AM
T-Paw has always been good at talking the talk but not so good at walking the walk. I wish him no ill will but I think he would be a poor pres. if he does the same crap he did in MN. (oh it's not a tax, it's a fee, I won't spend state money on a Twins Stadium but I'll do the end around and give the County to OK, we have to go green, etc).
With that said, he couldn't be any worse than the current president, could he?
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 06-May-11 09:55 AM
Frankly, I thought it was refreshing that a candidate had a genuine grasp of the issues & had clear solutions. Yes, he's had his stumbles but the TEA Party would keep him accountable. And no, I don't think he'd be a poor president. Great? Definitely not. Poor? Not a chance.
PS- we won't find a perfect candidate.
Comment 2 by eric z at 06-May-11 12:57 PM
Gary - Out of curiosity, have you seen any polling that parallels or differs from your subjective viewpoint?
Not that you are wrong, but neither of us have our fingers on the pulse of SC voters.
And that's where the event was.
Surely, it can be argued that the impacts of that event reach beyond the southern primary blitz we will be seeing in the lead-up to the GOP picking its challenger.
But then, my question would be whether there is any objective polling about who viewed it where?
Somehow, I missed it, as an event lower in priority and compelling interest to the NBA playoffs, or to paint drying.
Response 2.1 by Gary Gross at 06-May-11 02:53 PM
Eric, I haven't seen any polling from SC or other individual states. While I'm a limited gov't conservative, I'm opposed to the thinking that gov't service is automatically a negative. It clearly isn't. That's what people in last night's FG essentially said. That's the card that Cain essentially played.
I thought Gov. Pawlenty's answer on whether he still thought President Obama was weak on foreign policy was smashing. He cheerfully praised President Obama's signing off on killing bin Laden. He then pivoted to say that President Obama's strategic blunders in Iran (letting the mullahs trample a genuine grassroots movement to liberate their country), Egypt (saying that Mubarak had to go, then pushing for his ouster) & Libya (saying that Qadaffi had to go, then doing nothing to push Qadaffi out the door) made his foreign policy confusing and lacking in any underlying principles.
Without a clearly defined set of underlying principles, there can't be a coherent policy.
PS- If the economy doesn't start gaining steam of its own, President Obama will be a one-and-done administration.
Comment 3 by James Douglass at 08-May-11 06:52 PM
Mr. Pawlenty has erased any chance of his winning the GOP nomination for President. He has suggested that Minnesota "test" the mileage tax.
No amount of back-tracking or lipstick on that pig will win anything in 2012 except ridicule and defeat.
James Douglas
Garden City, Kansas
Comment 4 by Jim Jensen at 09-May-11 10:19 AM
James Douglas,
Tim Pawlenty tested the mileage tax and he said it failed. I'm not sure what your point is. Tim Pawlenty is against the tax, you forgot to bring that up in your comment.
Take a Hike, Rep. van Hollen
According to this article , Chris van Hollen thinks that the American people should pay higher taxes because Congress won't accept responsibility for their reckless spending:
The U.S. Treasury says the borrowing cap will be breached on May 16, although it can take steps to keep funding the government until August 2. An increase of roughly $2 trillion is needed to ensure enough borrowing power through the November 2012 election, Treasury officials have said.
Like the White House, Ryan and other top Republicans favor setting a long-term deficit reduction goal with automatic triggers that would kick in if deficit-cutting targets had not been met.
But a clear fault line remains as Republicans say those triggers should only require spending cuts, not automatic tax increases. Democrats say tax hikes need to be part of the equation.
"Any credible debt cap would require a revenue component to go with spending cuts," said Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, one of the six lawmakers who met with Vice President Joe Biden for a first round of negotiations.
I've got a straightforward reply for Rep. van Hollen: Any attempt to raise taxes because you've been irresponsible will be met with great ire by the American people.
Isn't this typical Washington BS? They're irresponsible with our money. That's an established fact. The politicians act irresponsibly but they won't accept responsibility. Instead, they insist on punishing Americans for their irresponsibility.
If Rep. van Hollen thinks that we'll just take this proposal, then he needs a radical wakeup call. That won't happen without another election blowout.
Does Rep. van Hollen think we're idiots? Does he think we haven't noticed that he's voted for one deficit-exploding initiative after another? Obamacare, the stimulus and the multiple bailouts are just a few of those initiatives. Rep. van Hollen apparently thinks that we'll just be meek like lambs. Doesn't he think we'll call him out for his irresponsibility?
There's a reason why Republicans gained 63 seats in the House in the 2010 midterms. There's a reason why that electoral wipeout didn't just include the House. When the dust settled that night, the American people gave us a more conservative Congress, more conservative governors (GOP was a +5 there), more state legislative bodies controlled (GOP +19) and more conservatives in state legislatures nationwide (GOP +680).
The reason why these things happened is because the American people are fed up with Washington politicians who think that We The People should pay for their acting irresponsibly. NO MORE!!! NO MORE!!!
Instead of We The People paying for Washington's irresponsible spending, We The People are handing irresponsible politicians their pink slips. That's what happened with Rep. Oberstar. He thought that he didn't need to listen to We The People. Thanks to that arrogance, we've got Chip Cravaack truly representing the people of the Eighth District.
If Rep. van Hollen insists on raising taxes, most likely on America's job creators, then his party needs another round of electoral comeuppance. They need reminding that We The People refuse to pay for his party's fiscal irresponsibility.
Posted Friday, May 6, 2011 8:57 AM
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Outlining the GOP Path To Victory Against Obama, Democrats
Jay Cost's Weekly Standard article contains one paragraph that Republican voters should take note of before the primaries next January. Here's that paragraph:
And so, we can lay down the following marker: if the economic recovery does not begin to show substantial improvement, the likes of which we have not really seen in the last two years, and if the GOP nominates a reasonably acceptable alternative, this president is going to lose in 2012, and the final result will not be close. Nobody gets reelected with employment way down, real income way down, and 14 percent of his fellow citizens on food stamps. Nobody.
The economy has been terrible for so long that people don't trust President Obama's handling of the economy :
Public disapproval of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy reached a new high in mid-April, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll, as gasoline prices neared $4 a gallon and Washington lawmakers fought a bitter battle over the federal budget.
Some 57 percent of registered voters said they disapproved of Obama's economic management, while only 40 percent approved. That's the lowest score of his presidency.
"These numbers spell political trouble," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, which conducted the survey. "To get re-elected with a 57 percent disapproval rating would be a very tall order."
This isn't just a snapshot or outlier. Check out this polling information :
Just 34 percent of Americans said in the CBS/Times poll that they approved of the way Obama was handling the economy, the lowest point since he took office. That figure also reflects a downward slide since mid-February.
Fifty-five percent said they disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy, not the lowest figure of his presidency (that was 57 percent, in mid-April), but close to it.
What should be disconcerting to Democrats is that the first numbers were from a pre-UBL poll, the second polling numbers are from a post-UBL poll that gave President Obama a bounce in the horserace numbers:
The president's overall approval rating jumped 11 points; 57 percent of those surveyed said they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, up from 46 percent who said the same in a mid-April poll.
Yes, this morning's jobs report was stronger than I thought it might be but yesterday's news that first time unemployment claims jumped isn't good news for next month's job report.
Simply put, it's like President Obama is swimming with a big anchor tied to his ankle. The worst news for him is that that anchor is one of his own making, with 'special' help from then-Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid and their radical minions.
It didn't play when President Obama kept blaming President Bush for this economy. That's why he stopped with that spin. The spin didn't work because his spending policies are to blame for this staggering economy.
What's becoming apparent, too, is that there's no balance in President Obama's perspective on the economy. Anything that the unions and bureaucrats is being funded. Standing in stark contrast to that is that the small business community has gotten the shaft from this administration.
You can't have a real economy if small businesses are hurting. That's why the statistics on people receiving welfare are the statistics that should worry David Axelrod the most.
President Obama can talk all he wants about this morning's jobs report. The American people know that they're falling behind. They know that gas prices are hurting them on a daily basis. They've seen grocery prices jump in the past 2 months. They see how their neighbors have mortgages that are under water.
This isn't proof that the Obama Recovery is gaining momentum.
House Republicans should push the agenda, especially with regards to cutting spending and increasing domestic energy production with their all-of-the-above American Energy Initiative plan.
President Obama and the Democrats have shown that their solutions always include reckless spending, irresponsible overregulation of energy companies and attempting to raise taxes on America's job creators.
That's what you do to strangle, not grow, an economy.
Posted Friday, May 6, 2011 12:02 PM
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Rep. Winkler's Feeble Constitutional Argument
The House is debating HF201 , Peggy Scott's bill that would disallow public funding for abortions. Rep. Lesch spent at least 5 minutes arguing that the bill shouldn't be passed on the grounds that it's already unconstitutional (See Doe vs. Gomez).
What a feeble argument. Rep. Scott's bill is the Minnesota version of the Hyde Amendment. What part of the Minnesota Constitution was the Minnesota Supreme Court ruling based on? I'd argue that the Minnesota Supreme Court's Doe vs. Gomez ruling is sloppy jurisprudence and isn't based on anything in the Minnesota Constitution.
Rep. Winkler is getting skewered by Rep. Wardlow. Rep. Wardlow asked Rep. Winkler what part of the Minnesota Constitution he relied on for the Doe vs. Gomez. Rep. Winkler said that we "shouldn't go against settled law."
That's the flimsiest constitutional argument I've heard in ages. Rep. Winkler's argument isn't based on a constitutional provision but on the flimsy argument, apparently, is that Supreme Court rulings shouldn't be overturned. EVER. If that principle was always followed, the Dred Scott ruling would still be the law of the land.
I've gained a newfound appreciation for Doug Wardlow's debating abilities. He dissected Rep. Winkler's questions with ease and clarity.
One other thing that's worth noting is that it was brought out that there are laws on the books that criminalize the taking of unborn human life across the nation. Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife Laci and their unborn child.
I'm fairly certain that neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Minnesota Constitution gives people the right to taxpayer-subsidized termination of legal human life.
The DFL said that the bill will get vetoed by Gov. Dayton, which isn't surprising. That said, these votes will be used to pin legislators down on this important issue.
Finally, today's debate was a great illustration of the GOP's debating skills vs. the DFL's ability to stick with their intellectually empty, emotion-based arguments.
What the DFL lacks in restraint, the GOP makes up for in gravitas.
Posted Friday, May 6, 2011 3:25 PM
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Dirty Little Secret Press Conference
This Forbes Magazine article reports that something unusual happened at Gov. Dayton's press conference yesterday. Actually, two unusual things happened, one as the result of the other unusual happening:
In an unusual move for a legislative leader, GOP Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch attended Dayton's news conference. Koch says Dayton's plan lacks the votes to pass the Legislature.
She says lawmakers hope to gain Dayton's support before they send him their budget bills. Conference committees are still working on the bills.
While Gov. Dayton keeps insisting that the only budget he'll sign is one that includes tax increases on Minnesota's job creators, the dirty little secret is that there isn't strong support amongst DFL legislators.
Gov. Dayton's stubbornness is noteworthy but the reality is that there are lots of DFL legislators who won't vote for increasing taxes. I've written repeatedly that DFL support for tax increases was tepid in 2009, passing by a 35-31 margin in the Senate and 68-66 in the House. That's when the DFL majorities in the Senate and House respectively were 46-21 and 87-47.
If there wasn't support for the DFL's tax increases when the DFL had huge majorities then, why would Gov. Dayton think that there's more support now that the DFL is the minority party in both houses of the legislature?
I might buy into his stubbornness if he was the charismatic leader that the DFL has been looking for for a generation. It isn't a secret to say that Gov. Dayton isn't a charismatic leader.
At some point, Gov. Dayton needs to end the charade that he's a leader with popular support. While it's true that some DFL legislators might vote to raise taxes if given another opportunity, the fact that Gov. Dayton couldn't find a DFL co-sponsor in the legislature says everything. Let's remember that there wasn't enthusiastic support for Gov. Dayton's tax increase proposal during his State of the State address. Crickets chirping is more accurate.
It's shameful that the Capitol reporters haven't mentioned that in their articles. They're pretending that Gov. Dayton's tax increase proposal isn't being treated like toxic waste by DFL legislators. That's a joke. It isn't a particularly well-kept secret at that.
In fact, it's the worst-kept secret in the Legislature.
Gov. Dayton, it's time to end this expensive charade that your budget has any popular support. It doesn't have widespread support. It's time to start paying attention to reality. It's time you returned from your vacation to Wonderland.
Posted Friday, May 6, 2011 5:02 PM
Comment 1 by KevinD791 at 07-May-11 12:17 PM
Dayton has played his only hand and it is a losing one. His one big plank has been pulled out from under him. He bet his Gov.ship on a dead horse so now he has no choice but to continue whipping it. Send him home and put a potted plant in his chair, we won't know the difference from here on out. He was done six weeks in.
Comment 2 by J. Ewing at 08-May-11 10:54 AM
I still like somebody's suggestion that the GOP Legislature inform the Gov that he can veto the budget if he wants, but every subsequent budget sent up will contain more reforms and LESS spending. He can't line-item veto spending INTO the budget, only out of it.
Is Chip the Light at the end of the Tunnel?
Friday night, Congressman Chip Cravaack addressed a gathering of the Beltrami County Republican Party , saying that the United States doesn't have a taxing problem:
Federal spending has become 'unsustainable and reckless,' he said. 'We've got to quit spending money we don't have.' Cravaack said he will continue to seek more and deeper cuts. 'History has shown us that Washington spends too much, not that we are taxed too little.'
He said the Democrat-controlled Senate and the Obama Administration are out of control.
'But please note that, even though they keep on pushing to increase spending, I will not vote for anything that keeps spending this bloated, bureaucratic government.
The bottom line is that cuts need to be made and we need to continue finding savings where they can be found.'
Chip, a great place to start would be with the agencies listed in this GAO report . The replications, aka waste, found within that report are too numerous to list in this little post.
Suffice it to say that the report is 345 pages long, with page after page devoted to identifying duplicative agencies in multiple cabinet offices essentially doing the same thing.
When it was initially reported on TV, this GAO report was said to contain over a trillion dollars worth of wasteful spending over the next decade caused by replicative programs/agencies.
Having Chip in Washington, DC is such a bright change after years of Jim Oberstar's pork-chasing days. Chip's part of the solution to the problem that Jim Oberstar created.
I think that's why Chip got this introduction:
In introducing Cravaack as the keynote speaker Friday night, Ken Cobb, president of the Beltrami County Republicans, said that when President Barack Obama took office, it seemed there wasn't much of a light at the end of the tunnel.
But in March 2009, the Tea Party started up, and there was a glimmer of hope, he said.
In January 2010, Cobb met Cravaack for the first time at a meeting in Bemidji.
'I was instantly impressed. I told him that he sounded like a congressman to me, a good one' he said. 'That glimmer began to grow a little bit more. People started talking about taking back the U.S. House of Representatives.'
And on election night in 2010, 'at 3:40 in the morning, Chip Cravaack stood up and said 'We did it.'
'The U.S. House of Representatives, they are the light at the end of the tunnel, and they are the beginning of bring America back the way it needs to go,' Cobb said.
Hopefully, we'll add more bright stars like Chip to the House of Representatives in 2012. It'll require alot of work but the rewards will likely be immediate and substantial.
By the way, the overlap and replication impact people's lives:
For more than a decade, GAO has reported on the fragmented nature of federal food safety oversight. The 2010 nationwide recall of more than 500 million eggs due to Salmonella contamination highlights this fragmentation. FDA is generally responsible for ensuring that shell eggs, including eggs at farms such as those where the outbreak occurred, are safe, wholesome, and properly labeled and FSIS is responsible for the safety of eggs processed into egg products.
In addition, while USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service sets quality and grade standards for the eggs, such as Grade A, it does not test the eggs for microbes such as Salmonella. Further, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service helps ensure the health of the young chicks that are supplied to egg farms, but FDA oversees the safety of the feed they eat.
Oversight is also fragmented in other areas of the food safety system. For example, the 2008 Farm Bill assigned USDA responsibility for catfish, thus splitting seafood oversight between USDA and FDA. In September 2009, GAO also identified gaps in food safety agencies' enforcement and collaboration on imported food. Specifically, the import screening system used by the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not notify FDA's or FSIS's systems when imported food shipments arrive at U.S. ports.
Without access to time-of-arrival information, FDA and FSIS may not know when shipments that require examinations arrive at the port, which could increase the risk that unsafe food could enter U.S. commerce. GAO recommended that the CBP Commissioner ensure that CBP's new screening system communicates time-of-arrival information to FDA's and FSIS's screening systems and GAO continues to monitor their actions.
It's appalling that CBP and other oversight agencies contribute to safety risks rather than eliminate them. That's totally unacceptable.
Congress needs to pass legislation that eliminates this replication as quickly as is humanly possible. If the bureacracies drag their feet while insisting that they're going as fast as they can, then that bureaucracy should be eliminated immediately and their responsibility moved into a previously overlapping agency ASAP.
Keeping Chip in Congress is vital to getting these bureaucracies cut down to size. That certainly won't happen with a progressive like Tarryl Clark in office because she's committed to protecting union workers.
Eliminating agencies and reducing the number of inspectors by eliminating responsibility overlap means fewer campaign contributions for Democrats. Anyone thinking that Democrats will vote for that type of sweeping government reform isn't just naive. They're ignoring reality.
I can't say that Chip is THE light at the end of the tunnel. What I can say, though, is that Chip is part of the solution.
Posted Saturday, May 7, 2011 9:38 PM
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High Praise Indeed
John Pederson is showing why he'll be St. Cloud's state senator for as long as he wants the seat. Aside from John being one of the most honorable men in politics, John's had a habit of attracting support from across the political spectrum. This LTE is gushing with praise for John chief authoring SF1230:
Greater Minnesota regional park and trail providers have been underfunded for years, and this bill goes a long way in correcting that. The bill would allocate 26 percent of the funds to a grant program to greater Minnesota cities and counties for parks and trails of regional and statewide significance.
The bill also would make that $10 million exclusive to greater Minnesota cities and counties for each of the next two years! Now they have to share what little is appropriated to the statewide grant program with the Met Council, which also gets its own huge exclusive allocation, 40 percent.
Great examples of local candidate projects are the Lake Wobegon Trail, Rockville County Park and Nature Preserve, Beaver Islands Trail, Bend-in-the-River Park, Wildwood County Park, River Bluffs Regional Park, Neenah Creek Park, Quarry Park and so many more.
What makes this LTE especially noteworthy is that it's written by Linda Peck, one of the most passionate environmentalists anyone could have the good fortune of meeting.
John & Linda Peck have devoted their lives to improving and increasing outdoor recreation opportunities in Central Minnesota. They were also huge advocates of the Legacy Act.
In full disclosure, I voted against the Legacy Act.
Nonetheless, John and Linda don't just put their money where their mouth is. They've put their land where their heart is :
On September 23, 2006, the Friends of the Sauk River held its first annual membership meeting. The meeting was held at John and Linda Peck's residence in Rockville. Approximately 20 members attended. A new Board of Directors was established, as well as officers of the Board. During the meeting the Peck's also presented information regarding their recent land donation to Stearns County and the establishment of a 356 acre park complex along the Sauk River.
John and Linda Peck wanted to establish something lasting that would help Central Minnesota outdoors enthusiasts and families enjoy nature. Their solution was to donate 356 acres of their private property to make that a reality.
That's the type of people who enthusiastically support John's work even though they probably don't agree on a majority of issues with him. That's ok with them. They'll just appreciate him when their interests converge.
Posted Sunday, May 8, 2011 1:53 AM
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Dayton's $2.7 Billion Hole
This morning on @Issue With Tom Hauser, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch and House Speaker Kurt Zellers were questioned by Hauser about Gov. Dayton's statement that GOP numbers don't add up. To their credit, Leader Koch and Speaker Zellers didn't go soft on the question.
Sen. Koch said that it was Gov. Dayton's proposal that doesn't add up, saying that Gov. Dayton's budget won't balance "without Gov. Dayton's $2.7 billion tax increase." She then said that there isn't DFL support to pass the bill.
Sen. Koch then essentially said that Gov. Dayton is playing games with the numbers, saying that, in several instances, MMB agrees with the GOP's numbers but Gov. Dayton disagrees with the GOP's reforms.
Let me be succinct about this. Gov. Dayton's dishonest statements are aimed at causing a trainwreck at the end of the session. That's what he's been hinting at since the start of session.
Appearing at last week's press conference, Gov. Dayton pretended like there was substantial bipartisan support for his tax increases. That isn't the truth. When they held the vote on the Dayton tax increases, it got 1 vote, that coming from Rep. Thomassoni.
DFL bloggers will say that that's only because Gov. Dayton texted Rep. Thissen and Sen. Bakk, urging them to not vote for his plan. He then said that the votes were a PR stunt.
The dirty little secret is that they wouldn't have passed had he not texted them to vote against his tax increases. Gov. Dayton did that to save face from being embarrassed by his own party. Had DFL legislators vote their will, Gov. Dayton would've suffered an embarrassing defeat early in the session.
Let's remember the lessons from 2009. That's the year when Sen. Bakk's tax increase passed a veto-proof Senate majority by a 35-31 margin. That's the year that Rep. Lenczewski's tax increase passed by a 68-66 margin. That's the year that the DFL held a 46-21 seat majority in the Senate and an 87-47 seat majority in the House.
Now they're in the minority. Does Gov. Dayton think that votes for his tax increases will magically appear? Does he think that there's a silent majority in the legislature for his tax increases? If he thinks that, then he's either not listening to Rep. Thissen and Sen. Bakk or Rep. Thissen and Sen. Bakk aren't telling him the truth.
I doubt it's the latter.
It isn't debatable that there's substantial DFL opposition towards Gov. Dayton's tax increases in the House and Senate.
It's time Gov. Dayton returned from his vacation in La-La Land and returned to Realityville.
Posted Sunday, May 8, 2011 12:08 PM
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DFL's Dishonesty, Delusional Thinking Spreading
I just wrote that Gov. Dayton isn't dealing with budget realities . It appears as though the DFL's grip on reality is slipping. This time, it appears as though Ember Reichgott-Junge is suffering from Dayton Deficit Delusion Disorder.
Appearing on @Issue With Tom Hauser, Reichgott-Junge said that, in years past, "the legislature passed budgets that were at least close to the governor's budget." That isn't attached to reality in any meaningful way. It simply isn't.
First, the DFL supermajorities didn't pass budget targets in 2007 or 2009. It didn't happen. I recall one of Gov. Pawlenty's veto notes in 2007 to Speaker Kelliher and Sen. Pogemiller saying that he wouldn't sign budget bills until the DFL said how much the DFL wanted to spend that biennium.
I recall that the first set of DFL omnibus spending bills in 2007 would've increased general fund spending by 17+ percent. The final omnibus spending bills increased spending by 9.3%. That's a $2,500,000,000 difference.
I'd love hearing Sen. Reichgott-Junge explain that a $2,500,000,000 spending difference is "at least close to the governor's budget."
The reality is that there isn't a huge difference between the GOP legislature and where the DFL is really if the DFL isn't willing to raise taxes. The gap is less than $500,000,000.
Gov. Dayton's budget proposes to spend $37,000,000,000. Since the DFL won't vote for Gov. Dayton's tax-the-rich scheme, that requires removing another $2,700,000,000 in spending because the revenue isn't there. In practical terms, that puts the DFL budget at $34,300,000,000. The GOP budget calls for spending $34,000,000,000 during the 2012-2013 biennium.
That isn't a big gap. It's anything but insurmountable.
The only way it doesn't get closed on time is if Gov. Dayton insists that his tax-the-rich scheme be part of the final solution. If he insists on that, he'll isolate himself from the DFL and reality. Good luck with that.
Let's be clear about something else. The DFL isn't being honest with Minnesota. Their chanting points include complaining that the GOP won't raise taxes. The DFL's dishonesty is exposed by the fact that the DFL won't vote for Gov. Dayton's tax-the-rich scheme. They'll just criticize the GOP for not breaking the promise that they made with Minnesota voters.
The DFL must decide in the next 2 weeks whether they'll follow their failed leader off the proverbial cliff or whether they'll put a serious budget together.
With Gov. Dayton's budget so unrealistic, the DFL is faced with a put up or shut up moment. The DFL's options are to follow Gov. Dayton into oblivion or vote for the GOP budget.
The GOP knows the DFL's game. Just this once, the DFL says, we must raise taxes. What they're really saying is that they want a free pass this time and they'll think of another excuse the next time they want to spend recklessly.
The GOP is right in saying 'No Thank You' to Gov. Dayton's tax increases. I hope the GOP just closes up the conference committees and passes the omnibus bills. Further, I hope they force an override vote on the tax bill because I'd love putting the DFL on the spot of either supporting Gov. Dayton's job-killing tax increases or supporting the GOP's tax sanity plan.
I'm fed up with the DFL's tricks and gamesmanship. They're acting like it's just a big game aimed at winning back seats. Gamesmanship isn't what's needed. Statesmanship is required.
Unfortunately, statesmanship in the DFL died years ago. I haven't found and DFL legislators that's classify as a statesman. I'm not holding my breath on it either.
Posted Sunday, May 8, 2011 5:37 PM
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