Rebooting The Machine

After three weeks of government shutdown, Minnesota lawmakers have reached a deal to restart the state government and get people back to work.

The end of the 20-day Minnesota state government shutdown was only hours away Wednesday morning, as lawmakers cast their final votes on the state’s budget and the bills were being prepared for Gov. Mark Dayton’s signature.

The special session concluded just before 3:45 a.m. Wednesday after a marathon of votes on nine budget bills and a $500 million bonding bill. There was little fanfare when the deal was done and lawmakers had erased a projected $5 billion deficit largely through one-time borrowing.

The dormant gears of Minnesota’s government will not start moving until Dayton signs the bills on Wednesday morning.

Republican leaders said after the final votes that they were satisfied with the final product.
“We were dealt a situation,” said House Speaker Kurt Zellers. “I think we dealt with it the best that we could.”

Asked whether her members would run on or against this budget in the next election, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch said they would stand behind it.

“We’re going run on this budget,” Koch said. “We’re going to talk about closing a $5 billion forecast deficit without raising taxes. That’s a big thing. And we’re going to talk about the major reforms in these bills.”

The "major reforms" in these bills are mostly spending cuts and one-time bond issues, leaving the state's school systems out in the cold as they took a $700 million hit from delayed payments and MinnesotaCare, the state's Medicaid system, took a similar hit as the 2% tax on health care providers to fund the program was eliminated by Republicans.  Meanwhile the budget get balanced because the state owes school some $2.1 billion now...and it's likely never to be repaid if Republicans have anything to say about it.  State Republicans can say they didn't raise taxes...but local school systems will now need to issue bonds or levies or have to make serious cuts in response.

The Republicans definitely won this time in Minnesota, and the results will be pretty ugly for the state for the rest of the decade.  I hope voters remember that come 2012.