Pawlenty back from fishing, meeting with leaders

Gov. Pawlenty returned to the Capitol this evening, just in time for a scheduled 5:00 p.m. meeting with legislative leaders.

Pawlenty flew back to St. Paul after attending the annual governor's fishing opener at Lake Kabetogama near the Canadian border. With time running out in the session to solve a nearly $3 billion state budget deficit, the Republican governor gave reporters a quick assessment of the ongoing negotiations.

"I think the outline on kind of the budget situation is in focus," Pawlenty said. "But the hang up seems to be this health care issue. There's just very strong disagreement between the Republicans and Democrats on various health care proposals."

DFL leaders want to leverage some available federal health care money to provide Medicaid coverage to low income Minnesotans currently covered by two state programs. Pawlenty and House Republicans are resisting the move.

"We've been going around and around on the same issues now for several days. We need to find a new way out of the box."

Still, Pawlenty said his focus is on the negotiations and not the what if scenarios of a lingering impasse.

"We'd like to get a deal on a bipartisan basis, get this done in timely, orderly fashion," he said. "And that's what we're going to try to do over next 24 hours."

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