Using Pawlenty’s words against him

DFL lawmakers are distributing a recent column written by Gov. Pawlenty that criticized the federal government for driving up the federal deficit. One lawmaker said the column is timely since Pawlenty's budget plan proposed borrowing $1 billion through the sale of state bonds. He would use future revenue from the state's tobacco lawsuit to pay off the debt (read about the plan here).

In particular, lawmakers pointed to this portion of Pawlenty's column:

But it all starts by putting first things first. A cornerstone of the Republican Party must be fiscal responsibility - living within our means like most Americans do. Wall Street and the federal government chronically disregard this principle and have substantially contributed to our current economic mess.

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Americans don't need a Nobel Prize winner to understand we can't solve a crisis caused by the reckless issuance of debt by then recklessly issuing even more debt.

Lawmakers will raise this column during a hearing on the issue this afternoon.

DFLers are raising these questions even though they have not proposed their own budget solutions yet.

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