Unfortunately, I don’t have access to any raw data to determine how many jobs the bonding bill will create. What I do have is access to a number of estimates by people who do have the data. Here are a few numbers I received from a source at the legislature.
Archive for the 'Misc. Local Politics' Category
Yesterday, I wrote that they would cost around 5,000 jobs, but I also said I’d go into a bit more detail.
At the beginning of the session, Tim Pawlenty proposed a $685 million bonding bill. In what appeared at the time to be an effort to negotiate in good faith, he said that he wouldn’t sign anything over $725 million. Then, after the Legislature passed a much larger bill, he appeared briefly to be willing to negotiate:
[Budget Commissioner Tom] Hanson replied that a $725 million bonding package is the governor’s “current position,” adding, “To come to an agreement we have to agree on size and scope. I’m not foolish enough to think that in the end it’s going to be $725 million.
So how in the world did it come to pass that Pawlenty cut the bonding bill down to $686 million? Was he simply lying when he appeared to be negotiating? Did something change his mind? Or, worst of all, did he do it because he’s angry with the DFL, and he decided to put our state citizens in the middle?
I hope those of you who had a chance to listen to the Supreme Court unallotment hearing will chime in with your reactions. I thought the justices sounded very suspicious of the Pawlenty administration’s arguments, although you can never be sure how much of that is simply them playing devil’s advocate.
More importantly, listening to Pawlenty’s lawyers dodge questions, tiptoe around the real issues, and just generally try to stretch the fabric of reality, it was pretty clear to me that the administration has a tough case to make.
The case against unallotment is simple, because our constitution is simple. Our Governor is not a legislator. He does not have the power to make law; his power is to enforce the laws passed by the legislature. He was sent a balanced budget, and did not have the right to unbalance it himself and then claim emergency actions were needed to re-balance it.
In contrast, the administration’s argument relies on a lot of clever interpretations of individual words within the statute. If you read the statute a very specific way, ignoring its intent, you could possibly argue that Pawlenty’s unallotment, while inappropriate, was not illegal.
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.
Today, the Minnesota Supreme Court will hear arguments in the Pawlenty administration’s appeal of the ruling against his illegal unallotment actions. The district court ruled that Pawlenty needs to honor the separation of powers found in our constitution, and that he does not get to unilaterally make law. Pawlenty appealed, bringing an enormously important case to the Supreme Court.
The UpTake will be providing a live stream of the arguments, with their live-blog starting in about 15 minutes.
MPR’s Mid-Morning will also carry the proceedings live in about half an hour. You can listen to the live stream here.
I’ll do my best to have some commentary this afternoon. It can be difficult for me to post during the day, so no promises there, but I’ll give it my best shot.
I saw glimmers of hope last week that there would be a real compromise on the bonding bill instead of the DFL’s usual complete and utter surrender to the Governor. But it turns out we’ll have complete surrender after all. The DFL is set to pass a new bonding bill which doesn’t change the total amount spent by much, but does include a number of Pawlenty’s priorities that had previously been ignored. Now, Pawlenty says he’ll sign the bill, but line-item veto an unspecified amount.
Governor Pawlenty said today that he intends to sign a nearly $1 billion bonding bill but suggested that he would line-item veto projects from the bill. Pawlenty told reporters that he hasn’t decided which projects he would line-item veto from the bill.
“The bonding bill incorporates most of our key priorities,” Pawlenty said. “It’s still too large but it’s a bill we can work with and we’ll just have to slim it down to something that is more reasonable and responsible and affordable.”
“A bill we can work with” means that his priorities have been included, so he can easily cut hundreds of millions of dollars in other projects. It’s too early to say yet, but my guess is that Pawlenty will cut heavily, leaving this year’s bonding bill a serious missed opportunity. I would love to be wrong on that, but we all know Pawlenty’s track record.
It will definitely squeeze hospitals, but the legislation that Pawlenty vetoed a few weeks ago would have done so as well. Here are the details from the Star Tribune:
Under the program, hospitals will form Coordinating Care Organizations that, in cooperation with counties, will manage and provide medical care for about 32,000 single adults. The measure must be approved by the Legislature and signed by Pawlenty.
However, hospitals will be paid a lump sum to cover all GAMC patients, so may have incentives to control costs. All care they provide beyond the single payment must be covered by the hospitals.
The new program, like all of the proposals that have been made to save GAMC, falls squarely into the “better than nothing” category. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s certainly better than either refusing coverage or forcing the hospitals to provide coverage without reimbursement.
I have to say, so far this session I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the willingness of the state’s political leaders to make compromises and get things done. Do I dare to hope that next year we might even be able to tackle our budget deficit?
Two articles from a couple of days ago put into perspective who the hard workers are in Minnesota’s Congressional delegation. I doubt very much that you’ll be surprised.
1. Walz awarded for his work on rural economic development
Congressman Tim Walz (D-MN) was presented with the 2010 NADO [National Association of Development Organizations] National Leadership Award today. Congressman Walz was selected based on his outstanding leadership and support of federal policies and programs that support regional and local economic competitiveness initiatives, especially in small metropolitan and rural regions.
2. Bachmann has missed the most votes of all Minnesota Representatives
An analysis by the Minnesota Independent shows that Bachmann has missed more votes than any member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation in the 111th Congress — even after subtracting votes missed when Bachmann left to spend time with an ill family member. Twenty of the 47 remaining votes Bachmann missed occurred on days when the Sixth District Republican had media appearances scheduled.
The fewest number of missed votes? That was Walz.
I’m feeling vindicated for suggesting the bonding bill was not going to be done as quickly as legislators had hoped. Negotiations are continuing , but I have a feeling there’s not going to be an agreement any time soon. Pawlenty’s opening offer was $685 million, and the DFL’s original bill was $1 billion. Pawlenty then said he could go as high as $725 million, and now a legislative working group has come up with a new bonding proposal:
A capital investment working group approved an offer that brings the bill total down slightly and contains the six core projects identified by the governor. However, the overall cost of the bill does not meet his desired amount.
The working group report calls for nearly $986.43 million in general obligation bonding, a decrease of about $13.5 million from the amount in HF2700*/ SF2360.
At this rate, it’s going to take a long time for the two sides to meet.
I think the implication of the legislature’s response is pretty interesting. By making a much smaller concession than the Governor, they seem to be signaling that they don’t plan on meeting the Governor right in the middle at $842 million, but that they want the final bill to be closed to their original figure than the Governor’s. If the two sides were to keep moving toward a compromise at the same rate as their first moves, they would meet at around $920 million.
I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, because for the last seven years we’ve had nothing but Pawlenty-style compromises — i.e. give the Governor everything he wants, and get nothing in return. But according to the Star Tribune, for some reason it appears the administration is negotiating in good faith on the bonding bill:
[Budget Commissioner Tom] Hanson said that Pawlenty, who earlier proposed spending $685 million, ultimately wants a bill “in the $725 million range.”
“What that means is the governor wants his bill,” said Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon.
Hanson replied that a $725 million bonding package is the governor’s “current position,” adding, “To come to an agreement we have to agree on size and scope. I’m not foolish enough to think that in the end it’s going to be $725 million.”
Like I’ve written a number of times, the time to spend on our infrastructure projects is right now, when people desperately need to work, interest rates are low, and we can get a good deal on construction costs. I’m hopeful that the Pawlenty administration will be willing to play ball and get us as large a savings as possible.
Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives. It’s about advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and the world. Politics is about doing well for the people.
To hell with that!
I wish everyone agreed with Wellstone that “Politics is about doing well for the people.” Unfortunately, for the GOP over the past decade or so, it’s much more about baseless attacks against their opponents. Like the candidate for the Republican nomination in SD 18, who called army veteran and DFL-endorsed candidate Hal Kimball a “dangerous guy”.
Here’s a suggestion for Tim Benoit, the candidate who made that comment. Either provide some evidence to show that Kimball is, indeed, “dangerous,” or try campaigning like you have something positive to say. You clearly don’t, but just pretend.
Awesome! Our budget deficit on an off year when the budget should already be dealt with is “only” $1 billion. I guess that’s good news; at least things have improved a bit. But frankly, it just takes our budget crisis from really, really terrible to just plain really terrible.
And the slightly good news is outweighed by the fact that the budget forecast has actually gotten worse for the next biennium. Including inflation, we will have a $7 billion budget deficit in the next biennium.
Our budget crisis is the direct result of a failure of leadership in St. Paul. Both Republican and DFL policymakers have relied for far too long on one-time fixes and accounting gimmicks to kick the can down the road. Well, they’re not going to be able to do that anymore. As I’ve been arguing for several years now, we desperately need some leaders in St. Paul who are willing to make the tough choices to balance the budget. These are going to be unpopular with just about everyone in Minnesota, but we no longer have any choice.
Some of the things we need to do include:
Joe Bodell at MN Progressive Project has been hard at work piecing together reports from all of the Senate District and County Unit conventions, trying to get a handle on where the delegates stand. According to his math, Margaret Anderson Kelliher is just ahead of R.T. Rybak, With Paul Thissen in a distant third.
That’s all I’m going to say here. Go check out the numbers for yourself over at MN Progressive Project.
A couple of weeks ago, Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer voted in favor of saving health care benefits for the poorest Minnesotans. In fact, the House voted for saving GAMC overwhelmingly, 125 to 9, with 38 Republicans voting for the bill. Now, however, all of those Republicans have voted against overriding Tim Pawlenty’s veto, including Seifert and Emmer, one of whom will be the MNGOP’s nominee for Governor.
However you slice it, this flip-flop says something about Seifert and Emmer’s politics. There are a few options, as I see it:
- They support health care for the poor, but they’re not willing to stand up for their principles and oppose the Governor.
- They oppose health care for the poor, but they’re not willing to stand up for their principles and vote against the bill when it has overwhelming support.
- They don’t really give a damn either way.
They can’t possibly explain both votes, and I’m not sure which of these explanations would be worse for someone who would like to be Governor.
I have a monthly budget for my family. I also have a loose budget that looks far into the future, and anticipates things like retirement, setting aside money for college, and so on. The leader of our state, on the other hand, has never looked any farther than the next budget forecast.
That’s why, in every single biennium, and sometimes even in off years like this one, we are forced to find a new budget “fix.” Those budget fixes more often than not rely on one-time funds and new accounting gimmicks, rather than real solutions. A real budget solution wouldn’t just keep us above water for 8 months; it would find the right mix of spending cuts and revenue increases to leave us with a surplus each year instead of a deficit.
Despite his complete failure to propose a responsible budget during his tenure, Pawlenty loves to chide the DFL and call them fiscally irresponsible. The most recent example of that came as Pawlenty, from a hotel in Washington, indicated he would veto the bonding bill. Pawlenty’s action will force the state to delay major projects that could create jobs immediately. More importantly, if he gets his way, we won’t spend the money when we can get good prices and when our state needs the jobs; instead, we’ll do the same projects in two or four years, but they’ll just cost more.
Citing our budget deficit for vetoing a bonding bill is, quite frankly, short-sighted. Bonding deals with improvements to our infrastructure, whose costs are spread over 15 to 20 years. It’s more fiscally responsible for us to get a good deal while it’s available.
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