Daily Digest: New year, new session

Good morning and Happy New Year. The holidays are over, and it's time for the Minnesota Legislature and Congress to get back to work. I'll be on the radio at 11 today from the state Capitol with some top lawmakers talking about what to expect, and I hope you can tune in. For now, let's go to the Digest.

1. In Minnesota there are plenty of issues and plenty of bad feelings left from last year's session. Health care, transportation, taxes and public works projects all were left needing attention. And as of last month Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton were not getting along. Now both the House and Senate will be controlled by Republicans, and their priorities will make it to the governor's desk to be signed or vetoed. (MPR News)

2. For Gov. Dayton this will be the beginning of his final two years in office and his last budget session. Because the governor will not seek another term, there are likely to be plenty of people from both parties lining up to run for the job. That will add another wrinkle to tough negotiations, and Dayton says he expects to be the target of lots of criticism. (Star Tribune)

3. One thing Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree on is that the Capitol itself hasn't looked better since it first opened more than a hundred years ago. The building reopens to the public today after a $310 million top-to-bottom restoration. There's still some work going on and the formal grand opening is in August, but the restored art looks spectacular. (MPR News)

4. Republicans are in their strongest position in years in Washington. They control the House and Senate and will have the White House as well, once Donald Trump takes office in a few weeks. They intend to immediately begin to roll back some of President Obama's key initiatives. That means repealing the Affordable Care Act and sweeping away regulations they say are holding back businesses. (NPR)

5. One of the first acts of the new House Republican majority in Washington was a closed door vote to cut the power of an independent ethics office that was set up in 2008 after a lobbying scandal that sent three members of Congress to prison. House leaders, including Speaker Paul Ryan, opposed the move, which is expected to be completed by a vote later today. Even some conservatives said it looked like a poor way to begin to "drain the swamp." (New York Times)

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