Raging politics, your job, your economy

By Joe Spear
Free Press Editor

It has not been a quiet day in Lake Wobegon. The Minnesota State Capitol is teaming with back and forth on the blistering issues of solving a $3 billion state deficit by Monday or so.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed the DFL's budget solution that contained $730 plus million in cuts and $430 million plus in tax increases on well-off folks.

He said he would and he made good.

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher said Pawlenty must negotiate, and for them it was him coming up with a plan for revenue that would pay schools back for the $1.7 billion the state is borrowing from them to balance the budget.

Given Pawlenty does not appear likely to negotiate anything, could there be a government shutdown?


The Star Tribune quoted Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, saying that few Minnesotans wanted a budget fix that relied entirely on tax increases -- or budget cuts -- and instead wanted a "blend" of both.
"That's common sense," Simon said. "That's what I think Mr. and Mrs. Minnesota want. But we have this cult-like devotion to 'no-new-taxes.'"

If you look at recent Free Press polls, the one online and previous polls, that has been the case. People voting for how to solve the problem say they'd like to see spending cut and taxes raised.

Actually 29 percent say raise revenue and or taxes and another 11 percent say cuts spending and raise revenue. The scarier part is 25 percent say "shutdown government to save money."

I'm not sure what that would look like, but it wouldn't be good, especially for Blue Earth and Nicollet County who have over 6.5 percent of all jobs tied to state government, for a total of about 3,500 jobs, while payroll is about 10 percent, or $170 million out of total wages of $1.7 billion.

Doing the math, cutting jobs 10 percent let's say, is 350 jobs, $17 million in wages.