Everyone is still focussing on the ‘Fee’ as the worst thing that came out of last year’s Legislative Session, but let’s not let this empower conservatives to further hurt Pawlenty’s approval ratings and chances for reelection.

Three major tobacco companies charged in court Friday that Minnesota’s new 75-cents-a-pack “health impact fee” violates their 1998 multibillion-dollar settlement with the state.

Why do I request that people back off? Because it isn’t about the ‘Fee’, it is about the billion dollar spending increase. The revenue from the ‘Fee’ was needed to ballance the budget. Had the Republicans in the Legislature not crossed the line drawn by Pawlenty in 2002, on taxes, the ‘Fee’ would have never been a thought. But due to fiscal irresponsibility, the ‘Fee’ was a must, unless you wanted Johnson’s 4th tax class.

But because dozens of Legislators thought it would be better to spend more money on their own reelection education and ‘transit’ than we had to spend. The Legislature forced Pawlenty to come up with some ways to generate new revenues, ahem take more of your money. Like it or not, Pawlenty has done a very good job holding the line on taxes. Where would we be if Moe was in office, how many more billions would he have allowed to be added to the budget?

A better question is: Where would we be if Pawlenty had strong Republican leadership and caucuses in both Houses of the Legislature?

The minority Republicans hold in the Senate were pretty reliable when it came to supporting the Republican agenda, but (in my mind) they suffered from having an ineffective leader. There is no reason Dean Johnson should be allowed to control the entire State’s budget like he did. I feel had Sen. Day, or another Republican been allowed to, forced Johnson to work with the rest of the Senate first, and not directly with the Governor, things would have been completely different.

Our budget was solved by 2 men, Pawlenty and Johnson. That is not the way it is supposed to work. We have 201 Legislators down there that got elected to do exactly that. It is a shame that at the end of the session, Pawlenty and Johnson had the final say over what happened. That is wrong as far as I am concerned.

Republicans were also failed by the Speaker of the House Sviggum, in my opinion. There was not a strong push to be conservative in the House. Many of the spending increases were proposed by Republicans. They all had pet projects they ‘had’ to get through, and they did just that with the help of the Speaker.

These projects ranged from ‘ethanol increases’, education increases, to (worst of all to me) ‘transit’ increases. Our transportation system is sluggish, but not broken. The major projects approved this session will do little more than get certain Legislators reelected by bringing home the bacon. The projects were focussed on certain regions with powerful Legislators who pulled strings to get them done, even though they are not the most congested areas. Meanwhile, the areas of the Twin Cities that are seeing real congestion, got zero help from the Legislature, and instead were told that ‘transit’ will help them.

These ‘transit’ solutions like Northstar and lightrail will not help most of the commuters. In a system that serves 2 million people a day or more, simply pulling even 20,000 people off of roads and onto ‘transit’ will not even be noticable. But Legislators still spent more money on these ‘dreams’ than on real solutions like adding lanes or even highways.

Back to why this session was so bad. Forget about the ‘Fee’, “it was the spending stupid”. All of Minnesota was betrayed by this session. The real problems we face were not solved. The media polls suggest that you all say transportation is the biggest problem, then why did they not do anything to seriously deal with it?

It is time to get over the ‘Fee’ folks. There is another session before the election and if all the Republicans continue to bash Pawlenty for solving the budget battle without a real tax increase (on income or sales), he will be left all alone. He has too few fiscal conservatives in St. Paul with him to get things done our way. If we all abandon him over this ‘Fee’ he will be left standing all alone and have no one to help pressure the real people that need to be blamed for the ‘Fee’, the other elected Republicans.

Had the Republican caucuses been conservatives, and not spenders, the ‘Fee’ would never have happened. So while you are all out there throwing stones, you might consider spreading the blame around a bit. Pawlenty cannot be held personally responsible for the 201 other legislators’ spending habits.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2005 at 9:43 am and is filed under Minnesota, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.