Once again, Mark Dayton is looking out for Minnesota taxpayers while the MNGOP plays financial games in a desperate attempt to retain control of the legislature. Republicans proposed an irresponsible tax bill that would pilfer from our budget reserve to provide a tax giveaway to corporations, and after a bit of soul-searching, the Governor thankfully vetoed it:

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a GOP-led package of business tax breaks that would have blown a $100 million hole in the state budget in coming years.

“It ignored my requirement that any future spending must be paid for and avoid adding to the next biennium’s projected deficit,” Dayton said in the veto letter….

Dayton said the GOP wrongly targeted cuts to business property taxes when individual property taxes have risen much more.

The GOP keeps doing things like this. They know that Minnesotans are furious with them for causing a shutdown to protect the super-rich. So they’re trying to buy their way back into office with borrowed money. First, it was pretending to pay back the school shift, when in fact all they would have done was shuffle our debt around. Then, it was a corporate tax giveaway “paid” for by depleting our budget reserve.

At every step, the Governor has been there to demand fiscal sanity. Thank you, Governor Dayton, for protecting us from the MNGOP’s horrendous fiscal failures.

SurveyUSA released a new poll today that focused heavily on the new Vikings stadium. I’m sick of talking about the Vikings, but if you’re interested, TonyAngelo has some analysis of that at MN Progressive Project.

I was struck by one of the few questions that wasn’t about the stadium. It shows that a majority of Minnesotans support equal marriage:

President Obama says that same-sex couples should be able to get married. Do you agree with the president? Or disagree?

• Agree 52%
• Disagree 42%
• Not Sure 6%

This is a big deal, in light of the anti-marriage amendment that will be on the ballot in Minnesota in 2012. A majority of registered Minnesota voters support equal marriage. Of course, we should take this result with a grain of salt, especially since the SurveyUSA poll has a pretty small sample size. On the other hand, the 10-point spread is outside the poll’s fairly large margin of sampling error, so it may very well be accurate.

What’s more, the poll may actually understate opposition to the anti-marriage amendment. It seems reasonable to me that there will be some in Minnesota who oppose equal marriage, but will also oppose the anti-marriage amendment for various reasons.  

I recognize that this poll doesn’t really square with a few other polls that have been released previously showing a slight edge in favor of the amendment. Maybe it’s the wording. Maybe it’s the sample — cell-phone respondents, for example, support marriage by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign that Minnesotans will stand up for all families in November.

Governor Dayton signed the bonding bill last week, which is a good thing. Anything that will create jobs in Minnesota is a victory. Unfortunately, it should have been a much bigger job creator. The bonding bill sent to Dayton for his signature was the smallest in two decades.

Signing the bonding bill was the right thing for Governor to do, since the legislature had already adjourned and $500 million is much better than nothing. The Republican legislature that produced the bill, though, should be ashamed for passing such a weak jobs bill.

While the legislature spent months working on a giveaway to one particular billionaire, they skimped when it came to helping Minnesotans. Minnesota needs something to jumpstart our economy, and the GOP utterly failed to provide that.

Over the last week or two, I’ve been following the MNGOP tax bill closely. The original tax bill was an irresponsible corporate giveaway that would have increased our already out-of-control deficit, and which the Republicans only pretended to pay for with fraudulent accounting tricks. Fortunately, the Governor vetoed it.

The most recent version, passed after Dayton’s veto, is much smaller but still increases the deficit and takes money from our budget reserve. Session Daily reports that Dayton is unsure whether or not to sign it:

As for the omnibus tax bill (HF2337*/ SF1972), Dayton said there are many provisions he likes, but that he’s still concerned about the impact of the bill’s “tails” on the state’s budget. A second package of mostly technical tax changes (HF2690*/ SF2136) is also a concern to Dayton, because he said it contains local government aid formula changes that would hit certain cities hard. He said he plans to study both bills in detail before he decides whether to sign or veto them.

Governor Dayton, I would urge you to veto this bill. Remember, despite improvements in the economy, we’re still facing over a $1 billion deficit in the next biennium. Not only that, we still owe our schools over $2 billion — a debt we need to begin paying down. Given our still-precarious budget situation„ we can’t afford to increase our deficit and raid the state’s budget reserve.

With the legislative session officially over, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota is already ramping up its campaign to take back the legislature:

Minutes after the gavel went down on the end of the 2012 legislative session, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota went live with a new website that will serve as a landing pad for the liberal group’s campaign for Democrats to take back the Legislature.

“A Better Legislature” is “an online and paid media campaign to hold legislators accountable for their misplaced priorities and to make the public aware of the negative impacts of Republican leadership on Minnesota,” a press release on the new website states.

A video on the new website dramatically reviews the Republicans’ failures during their two sessions in charge of the legislature, from their failure to pass a budget, to their draconian budget cuts, to the sex scandal that will cost Minnesotans hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in legal fees.

ABM played a major role in securing Mark Dayton’s victory in the 2010 election, and I’m glad to see them turning their attention to the legislature in 2012. The one thing that’s missing in the video, that I hope we’ll hear more about as the campaign progresses, is the GOP’s unwavering commitment to protecting the super-rich, even as they fought for brutal cuts to education, health care, and local government aid.

The Republicans’ control of the 2011-2012 legislature was an utter disaster. I’m glad to see ABM working to make sure Minnesotans remember just how bad it was, and I hope others will join them.

Disclosure: ABM is currently an advertiser on MNpublius. Editorial content on MNpublius is not influenced by advertising, and this post was not paid for or requested by ABM.

I’m surprised and grateful that Republicans didn’t try to hold the Vikings stadium or bonding bill hostage to try to force Mark Dayton to sign their irresponsible corporate tax giveaway. That means we’ll escape this session without the MNGOP adding $2.3 billion to our deficit over the next 14 years.

Still, that doesn’t mean they’re giving up. Yesterday, Republicans passed a stripped-down version of the tax bill. As it turns out, though, they still won’t properly pay for it:

The cost of House File 247′s tax cuts in the next biennium is less than in House File 2337. But it still creates a $73 million hole in the next biennium’s budget – and this bill does not identify which revenue increases or cuts in services would be used to fill in that hole….

In this budget cycle, $28 million of the cost is covered by drawing on the state’s budget reserve. The other $18 million is not specified in the bill, but is described as being covered by savings elsewhere in the budget.

The Republicans are up to their same old tricks, marred by the same fiscal incompetence.They just don’t get it — our budget reserve is not a slush fund, it’s an important tool for our state’s fiscal health. Minnesota, we can’t afford another two years of being governed by a party that doesn’t understand the difference.

Yesterday, Barack Obama continued his “evolution” on gay marriage, which has always been his way of saying that he supports equality but doesn’t want to say so for political reasons. He took a big step yesterday, but not a big enough one:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ deciding the issue on their own. But he said he’s confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

I guess I should be happy he’s taken even this step, but I’m tired of settling for “good enough.” I’m tired of Democrats playing cynical political games, trying to follow the polls, and always behaving as if they need to trick Americans into voting for them. I want leaders with the courage to stand up for their convictions and convince the American people that they’re right.

Instead, Obama waited to “evolve” until the polls showed a slight majority in favor of equality. Even worse, he’s still partially ducking the issue, saying it should be up to the individual states whether to make gays and lesbians second-class citizens.

We have an obligation as a nation to extend equal rights to all our citizens. We should never hold a vote on which groups of Americans are deserving of full citizenship and which are not. If the president truly supports equal marriage, he needs to go farther than saying that he supports it personally but is totally fine with individual states denying their citizens equal rights. This is too important an issue for that cop-out.

I’m glad to see that our legislators are at least working to reduce the cost of the stadium boondoggle for Minnesota taxpayers. Now, instead of giving a billionaire $548 million in free public subsidies, we’ll be giving a billionaire only $498 million in free public subsidies. The Vikings have agreed to the increase, and to hear them tell it, Zygi Wilf is now some sort of martyr for accepting “only” half a billion dollars in free public money:

Vikings spokesman Lester Bagley, capping a day of private meetings at the state Capitol, said early Thursday that the team had agreed to the new plan.   “The Vikings and [team owner Zygi Wilf] have stepped up,” said Bagley, “and made a huge commitment to Minnesota.”

No, Mr. Bagley, Minnesota has made a huge commitment to you. Wilf is doing what you’re supposed to do when you own a business — making a capital investment in his business because he believes the increased profits will be worth the investment. Except the state is actually giving him the lion’s share of the money he needs, because that’s apparently what we do for billionaires.

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t have much sympathy for him paying an extra $50 million when he’s receiving massive public subsidies for his private business. Wilf has approached this entire process with the sense of entitlement of a spoiled child. Where’s his gratitude for our exceedingly generous gift of half a billion dollars?

The Vikings have their stadium in the bag now. The House has passed the conference report, and the Senate will follow shortly. It would be nice to hear a word of thanks from Wilf and Bagley, instead of grousing over their small share of the costs.