Despite their repeated claims, spending would not go up under the GOP budget. They would have us spend less than we did even at the height of the recession. Not only is the GOP planning to cut state services, it’s actually worse than it sounds. There are a few important things to keep in mind about their budget proposal:

1. The GOP would cut our budget in actual dollars. Accounting for inflation, it’s significantly worse.
2. They want to cut our budget from austerity levels that were already doing harm to Minnesotans.
3. Health care costs are soaring, but the GOP doesn’t want to pay them. They don’t have a plan to reform the system; instead they just plan to cut off 22,000 Minnesotans.

So if they’re planning to cut spending, how can they claim they’re going to increase it? It’s funny, in a sad way. Tim Pawlenty’s fiscal mismanagement and accounting gimmicks have given Republicans a political weapon. You see, billions of dollars of spending in the last biennium came from outside funds, and nearly $2 billion more was “shifted” (read “stolen”) from our schools.

Confused? I don’t blame you. Maybe this will help: Alec at MN Progressive Project has helpfully annotated a chart originally produced by the fiscal staff of the Republican-run House [PDF], which shows what our spending really was when you factor everything in:

Notice the $1.9 billion in school shifts at the top. Like I wrote way back in December, this whole debate comes back to Tim Pawlenty’s school shift:

We need to increase spending by $1.9 billion just to hold education funding steady. The $11.4 billion we spent on education last year was never the “full amount,” which means that keeping funding at that level would be a massive cut.

So the MNGOP has agreed to fully fund schools, which is a good thing. But because of the funding shift, fully funding our schools results in a $2.3 billion increase over the last biennium, at least on paper.

You can probably see where this is going. The MNGOP claims that spending is going up. But they’re spending an additional $2.3 billion education, and of that, $1.9 billion just goes to restoring the money “saved” by the school shift. That means the other budget lines are decreasing.

That’s all before inflation, and before considering our expanding and aging population. After all, of course the cost for health and human services is going to increase when we have more and more elderly Minnesotans every year!

Make no mistake: the MNGOP budget calls for billions and billions in cuts. It will hurt a lot. And it’s all to protect the very richest Minnesotans.