Bob CollinsI don’t pretend to understand all of the complexities of creating a budget for the state of Minnesota, but I can see the future.
Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller today unveiled his idea for balancing the state budget that includes spending cuts and unspecified “new revenue” (See Polinaut for more).
The future? In the next election, your mailbox will be flooded by the Republican Party with screenshots like this:
(MPR)
Which will be mixed in with a little story like this.
Minutes after the opening gavel, Senate Republicans proposed trimming travel and cutting their postage budgets by $56,000. In the House, Republicans tried to roll back per-diem payments to legislators and cut committees. The moves were symbolic, since DFL majorities in the House and Senate voted them down.
And then capped with a quote like this:
“What I sense is that there isn’t a good understanding amongst the public that the negative fallout of trying to balance this budget is going to have an impact on every citizen in the state,” said (Sen. Leroy) Stumpf. “And that’s why E-12 and our education system will participate in that to some extent.”
No matter how it’s done, however lawmakers plug the budget deficit is going to come back to haunt them at election time.
