As the recession has dragged on, the need for economic assistance has steadily increased, and is only now starting to plateau. As more and more workers have been added to the rolls of the long-term unemployed, they have depended on meager government benefits to keep their families housed, clothed, and fed. It’s not an exaggeration to say that people could die without these benefits.

Yet as the need has grown greater, Republicans have fought ever harder to reduce benefits. Not only have they enacted steep benefit cuts, they’ve also made sharp cuts to local government aid, forcing cities and counties to lay off workers. That, in turn, means that even those still eligible for benefits can’t always get them:

A paperwork pileup has left some of the neediest Rice County families waiting for weeks for food assistance and health insurance.

Waiting for weeks? People can’t wait for weeks to get food assistance. We have a word for that — it’s called starvation. Don’t let the innocuous lede about “paperwork” distract you from what’s really going on here — people are going weeks without being able to properly feed their families. 

[Rice County Social Services Director Mark] Shaw said his office aims to process all food and cash applications within 30 days and health assistance within 45 days, but “I think we’re challenged with the capacity and case load we have,” he said….

“Could I have extra staff? It would certainly not hurt,” he said.

No, Mr. Shaw, you can’t. In fact, Republicans in the legislature keep insisting that local governments make cuts, even when the need for their services has been on the rise. And the result is as plain as it is cruel — people are starving.

Growth and Justice is out with a new report [PDF] studying the impact of universal health care in Minnesota. The results are phenomenal:

Total state health spending can be reduced by nearly 9% under a unified single-payer plan, as specified above, while eliminating uninsurance in the state. The savings are achieved despite covering the remaining 262,000 Minnesotans who would still be uninsured under the ACA.

…an employer payroll tax of 9.99% applied to wages over $12,000 per employee per year (an effective rate of 7.44% based on median wages) would cover the employer contribution to a health care system, retaining the federal tax preference afforded to employer-sponsored health care. …most employers would save money. Employers who currently offer insurance would save an average of $1,214 per employee per year. Firms not currently offering insurance would face increased costs as all employers would pay into a unified system as modeled in this report.

A unified system would save money for Minnesota families; the average family would save $1,240 annually on premiums and would see a small increase in income due to lower employer health care costs.

At first, the new payroll tax for employers might seem steep. Remember, though, that these employers would no longer be purchasing separate insurance, so their costs would actually be reduced overall. And though it costs less than we’re paying today, a single-payer system would insure absolutely everyone in the state.

Instead of working to turn Obamacare into a giveaway for corporations, this is what our legislature should be working on — providing affordable health care for every Minnesotan, without exception.

According to the Star Tribune, negotiators are close to an agreement on a new Vikings stadium:

Minneapolis, the state and the Minnesota Vikings have reached a tentative agreement on a new, $975 million stadium on a site at or near the Metrodome and on how to divide the costs, multiple sources said Friday.

Under the preliminary deal, the city would contribute $150 million in construction costs to the downtown Minneapolis project. The state would add $398 million, while the Vikings would pay $427 million. The city also would pay approximately $180 million in operating costs over the next 30 years, multiple sources close to the negotiations said.

For the life of me, I can’t imagine why our elected officials and civic leaders in Minneapolis could possibly want this.

Residents of Minneapolis will have the privilege of paying $330 million over the next 30 years to finance the venture. That means we’ll be paying higher taxes to subsidize afternoons of entertainment for hundreds of thousands of non-residents each year, the vast majority of whom will not spend a single dime in the city.

That’s not all, though. Minneapolis residents will reap the benefits of having a wasteland of parking lots on the edge of downtown. As we drive past the vacant lots, we’ll be filled with warm feelings thinking about the fun tailgaters have in those lots for a total of 12 hours a year. As an added bonus, we’ll also get to experience horrible traffic on Vikings game days.

Minneapolis City Council members, please don’t waste our money on this. Let’s send the Vikings elsewhere.

Attention, readers in Minnetonka! Today is a special election for city council, and on the ballot is the blogosphere’s own Joe Bodell. You may recognize Joe as the co-founder of MN Progressive Project.

If you’ve read Joe’s stuff, you’ll know him as a smart, analytical guy who knows his stuff. He’s exactly the sort of person we all want to represent us.

Today’s special election is going to be a low-turnout affair, with a whopping seven candidates. That means every vote for Joe will make a huge difference. You know what to do!

Last night, we officially gained some new blood in the Minneapolis delegation to the legislature — Susan Allen and Kari Dziedzic, who both won their respective special elections in HD61B and SD59.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — as I wrote last month, the winners of the DFL primaries were virtually assured of winning the general elections in a city like Minneapolis. Nevertheless, congratulations are in order for making it official.

Congratulations, Representative-elect Allen and Senator-elect Dziedzic!

I did pretty well with my predictions for 2011, although I was a little early on the Vikings stadium and constitutional amendment ballot questions. I predicted they would be passed in 2011. The Vikings stadium nearly happened and one constitutional amendment is on the ballot so far. I think those will be finished in 2012.

So what will happen in 2012? Here are my predictions; leave your own in the comments.

Legislative Session

• This year’s session will be short, with very little getting done.
• The “surplus” forecast for the coming biennium will disappear, but legislators won’t be forced to revisit the budget and make additional cuts, either.
• Though it is a bonding year, a bonding bill will not be passed. Republicans will call it irresponsible borrowing, and incorrectly compare it to the borrowing they did to balance the operating budget.
• In lieu of a real bonding bill, we’ll get a Vikings stadium.
• The legislature will complete its work putting a number of constitutional amendments on the 2012 ballot. I predict we’ll end up with three.

2012 Elections

• The DFL will retake the majority in both houses of the Legislature.
• Chip Cravaack will be defeated in CD8.
• All of our other Representatives will retain their seats. If Michele Bachmann decides not to run for re-election, which is likely, her seat will remain Republican.
• Amy Klobuchar will cruise to reelection.

Constitutional Amendments

• The anti-marriage amendment will dominate the 2012 campaign, and will ultimately be defeated.
• A voter ID amendment will be placed on the ballot, and will succeed.
• An amendment will be placed on the ballot to make it harder for the legislature to raise taxes — that will also be defeated.

On Monday, I wrote that the MNGOP has had a lot of success pitting residents against their city and county elected officials:

Our cities and counties aren’t to blame for the property tax increases, but that’s difficult to see. For most people, it looks like their local governments are to blame. And that’s exactly what the MNGOP wanted.

Ramsey County is a perfect example of what I’m talking about: 

Ramsey County commissioners voted Wednesday on a 2012 budget that’s 2.7 percent lower than this year; but the math is never simple and it turns out that taxpayers will still pay more in property taxes next year.

The overall levy is going up 1.7 percent, because state and federal aid has decreased, commissioners said.

So Ramsey County commissioners are likely to get an earful from their constituents for raising taxes. Voters will fume, why can’t they be fiscally responsible? Once again, that’s exactly what the MNGOP wanted.

Yesterday evening, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch (R-Buffalo) announced that she would not be running for reelection in 2012, and that she would be resigning as Majoriy Leader immediately. In a letter to colleagues, she wrote “we cannot afford a lame duck leader in negotiations next session, which is why I am resigning from my position of Majority Leader.”

The highlights of Koch’s one-year tenure as Majority Leader were a government shutdown and a plan to “balance” the budget that relied on $1.4 billion in borrowing instead of asking millionaires to pay their fair share in taxes. Polls have shown that Minnesotans overwhelmingly blame the Republicans for this year’s shutdown, and they oppose the Republicans on taxes and spending. Koch’s legacy will thus likely be a DFL-controlled Senate in 2013.

Will Koch’s departure change anything within the Senate Republicans? Ordinarily, I would say it’s unlikely. If Deputy Majority Leader Geoff Michel (R-Edina) takes over, I believe the transition will be quite smooth.

However, if I ever believed Koch’s departure could signal some sort of change, right now is the time. The MNGOP is undergoing a massive wave of change, having lost both the state party Chair and Deputy Chair, and now their leader in the Senate. The party is ripe for change. Of course, it’s still too early to know whether there actually will be any changes, and if there are, whether they will be for the better or the worse.

Speaker Kurt Zellers has taken a wishy-washy, cowardly stance on the Vikings stadium. Knowing that the stadium is unpopular, Zellers has sought to do everything he can to distance himself and his caucus from the political fallout its inevitable passage. Here’s my personal favorite evasion, from a press conference yesterday:

Zellers said he will not propose his own Vikes stadium bill. “I’m far more focused on a daily basis on how we get jobs back in Minnesota”

Now he’s concerned about how we get jobs back? During the legislative session, he was focused on issues like gay marriage. Even when crafting a plan to balance the budget, Zellers’s caucus proposed a plan that would have cost Minnesota 30,000 jobs. Now that the politically-tricky Vikings stadium is up for debate, he finally cares about jobs? How convenient.