I don’t agree with all the choices being made by leaders in either house, but I do appreciate that they’re doing what needs to be done. The legislature is well on its way to balancing to budget by raising taxes and cutting spending. The House and Senate each released a tax increase plan this week, and now the House Health and Human Services Finance Division has approved a funding bill that would make $400 million in cuts.
Ultimately, there will probably have to be deeper cuts to Health and Human Services funding, but DFLers have made a good start so far. They seem to recognize that everyone will have to make sacrifices in order to balance the budget; there’s simply no way around that, unfortunately. It’s probably not going to make them popular — nobody likes being asked to make sacrifices — but I think Minnesotans will appreciate that the DFL leadership has made some tough choices that will benefit our state in the long run.
The first paragraph nails it on the head, what are the GOP and Pawlenty proposing except for no new taxes? Which isn’t proposing anything new, it’s sticking with the position they’ve always had when clearly, this is a huge problem and we need to compromise.
I am ALL for cutting spending if it is coupled with tax increases, both sides need to compromise their main political philosophy of invest in the state to make it better vs cut taxes and give people more pocket money to make it better. With 6 billion in deficiets, cutting spending will need to happen and raising taxes will need to happen, the question is what side is grown up enough to realize this and that appears to only be the DFL.