The 2010 Minnesota Legislative Session has finally ended and, as usual, it wasn’t pretty. Our elected public servants once again put off their constitutional duty of passing a balanced budget until the very end of the session.The DFL majority puttered away the last hours of the session voting on inane resolutions and stuffing some final morsels of pork into the usual end of session omnibus legislation.
As ugly as this session was, the outcome was probably the best we could hope for with the hapless leadership in control at the legislature. Other than being forced by the calendar to accept the governor’s unallotments they had incessantly demagoged, the only other way the DFL majority appeared to be willing to balance the budget was to raise our already outrageously high taxes, which the governor was not going to allow. The next legislature and governor will now have to deal with a daunting $5-7 billion deficit.
When DFLers Representative Kate Knuth and Senator Satveer Chaudhary were seated after the 2006 election the state had a projected $2-3 billion surplus that the DFL quickly transformed into a huge deficit through irresponsible spending and growth of government. And, to add insult to economic injury, the deficit has continued to balloon in spite of job killing tax increases and a modicum of fiscal sanity applied by Governor Pawlenty via his veto pen.
Enough is enough! The state is clearly long overdue for a thorough House (and Senate) cleaning this November.
