BREAKING: Pawlenty slashes 5,000 jobs from bonding bill

As I predicted, Tim Pawlenty did not compromise with DFL legislators. In fact, he slashed the bonding / jobs bill to even less than his original request — down to $680 million. Estimating the number of jobs that this money would have produced is tricky, but based on estimates made by a variety analysts earlier in the session, I’d estimate that Pawlenty just slashed at least 5,000 jobs — and that’s a fairly conservative estimate. I’ll go into more detail on the numbers later.

Of course, it’s not just the jobs that we’ll lose. As with any infrastructure bill, we don’t just hand out money to people; we use it to build infrastructure the state needs. Pawlenty’s big targets were higher education, public transit, and civic improvements. Rather than build these things when prices are low, we will instead wait until interest rates come up and construction costs rise.

At best, Pawlenty has shown himself to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. At worst, he’s shown himself willing to sacrifice our state’s well being to win over a few voters in the presidential primaries. Whatever his true motivations, Pawlenty continues to dig our state into a hole that will take years, if not decades, to dig ourselves out of.