Remember last session’s’ spending debate?

When the DFL – which had a crushing majority in the Minnesota State House, pushed through a massive $435 million dollar tax hike.

They squeedged the increase through on a couple of very close votes; the final vote in the House was 71-63.  Bear in mind that the DFL controlled 87 seats up until this month.  Tha’ts 87/47 in favor of the DFL; almost, but not quite, veto-proof.

And in the Minnesota Senate?  Much worse; the DFL  had a 47-21 veto-proof majority in the Senate.

So when it came time for up-and-down votes on the Dems’ pet tax proposal, you’d think – given not only the DFL’s fabled unity, but the power of the mandate with which they’d been sent to Saint Paul to refudiate the Pawlenty government the previous fall, that the votes in favor of the bill might have been 87/47 in the House (or maybe 93/44, given the power of the “moderate Republicans”), and 47/21 in the Senate.

To have performed any worse would certainly have been a sign that the DFL was splintering under the pressure of working with their mandate.

Right?

Well, of course it didn’t work out that way.  The DFL carried the bill through the House by 71.  Sixteen DFLers crossed over to vote against the bill.

And before that?  In an epic bit of political theater, the Senate had to do all but send the Mounties out to find Tarryl Clark to drag her into the Senate chamber to get the bill passed by one vote.  A total of twelve DFL senators crossed over to vote against the bill.

And this, at the height of the post-Obama afterglow.  When people seemed Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota.  Less than a month after the first appearance of the Tea Party, when it still seemed (because the media was trying to paint it)  like a fringe-y little brushfire.

Quiz Question:  Did this loss of 16 votes in the House, and 12 in the Senate, mean that…:

a) The DFL was fragmenting?: The DFL legislators saw the Tea Party rallies, three weeks early, anticipated the upcoming summer of anger at the Obamacare Town Halls, and were consumed with a wave of originalist fervor, which Larry Pogemiller and Margaret Anderson Kelliher managed to hold together by only the barest of margins, in an epic feat of legislative engineering?

b) That was the plan?: Some DFLers from outstate and outer-tier suburban districts felt nervous about piling taxes on their already-disgruntling districts; they made their reservations known to their caucus’  House and Senate leadership, which did the math – not only for the bill, but for the next round of elections.  They figured out how many votes were safe, not only for the bill, but for future elections; they realized that some DFLers  – especially some of the ones that had just won squeaker elections in the previous two cycles  in usually-GOP-districts – were going to need to be able to deny association with the bill to their voters.  The did the math, and made sure they had the votes to both pass the bills and give their more potentially-vulnerable members the out they knew they were going to need?

Answer? B, mostly; of course there were DFLers who had objections – but for the most part,notwithstanding the media’s push to impart drama on the proceedings,  the votes came as no surprise to anyone in legislative leadership.

Of course, drama sells newspapers.

Last week, the House voted on the GOP’s billion dollar budget cut bill.  And the regional DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) hopped around like a toddler who’d just made a good pants – because four Republicans broke with the GOP.

Doug Grow wrote about it at the Minnpost:

Republican legislative leaders quickly are learning that it’s easier to hold the caucus together when they’re in the minority rather than the majority.

On the first big economic vote of the still-new session, four Republicans joined a united DFL minority in opposing a $1 billion budget-cutting bill that Republican leadership claimed was the “easy part” of cutting into the state’s $6.2 billion deficit.

Well, actually, there were 3.5 Republicans joining the DFL in opposing the bill. Freshman Rep. Rich Murray voted for the budget cuts but then, after voting had closed, switched to vote against the measure, which passed 68-63.

The biggest Republican defector was freshman Rep. King Banaian a St. Cloud State University economics professor and a conservative blogger.

Just a couple of weeks ago, beaming House Republican leaders described Banaian as the caucus’s “Wayne Gretzky” on economic issues.

For non-hockey followers, that means that Banaian was being described as the majority’s economics superstar, its guru, its leader.

Now, right out of the box he said “no” to the first Republican plan.

What happened?

What would Doug Grow suppose happened?

Is it that…:

a) The GOP majority is falling apart, with members – including my radio colleague Banaian, who had heretofore authored and sponsored HF2, a step toward instituting Zero-Based Budgeting, one of the most transformatively fiscally-conservative ideas – already souring on fiscal conservatism, to the immense surprise and shock of the MNGOP’s leadership?  Or is it…:

b) Those devilish details that caused the DFL’s leadership to let 16 Reps and 12 Senators seek a little cover, after making sure that they had the votes to pass their tax bill two years earlier?   Details that had been discussed between members and leadership for weeks – even since before the session began?   Details that made the GOP’s leadership do the math, and figure that they could afford to let three potentially-vulnerable Representatives flake off and still leave plenty of votes to pass the vital bill?

What do you think?

I don’t talk with a lot of legislators, so it’s not like I know any details.  But do you suppose that Banaian – who represents an area that includes Saint Cloud State University, which already went through some serious budget cuts, and which would take more with the proposed bill, and who won his seat by 13 votes, the closest margin of victory in the entire United States last November – just might have had a talk or two with Kurt Zellers, who might have gone over the votes one way or the other, and rationed out a few “no” votes to GOPers that might need ’em?

What do you think?

When the DFL needs heavy buckets hauled from the well to the corral, Doug Grow is always there:

Reality crossed paths with rhetoric…

…If Republican leadership can’t hold its caucus together on this first budget vote, imagine how difficult it will be to find conformity as it attempts to cut the remaining $5.2 billion with a cuts-only approach.

Grow taking part in the DFL’s strategy in the legislature; trying to paint the GOP majority as divided in the run-up to Mark Dayton – the weakest governor in recent memory – releasing a budget that is sure to be a big tax-clogged monstrosity.  They are trying to find a wedge to pound in between the new majority and the newly-minted activists who put them into office.

To some extent, it’s drawn some blood; a few conservative activists are making disgruntled noises.

We’ll talk about that later on here.

The point being this:  relax, everyone.  The procedure of getting votes lined up, and handing out some exemptions from party  mandates for purposes of planning for future elections, is the very definition of  “politics as usual”, and not even in a necessarily bad way.

The larger point is that the agenda is moving ahead – and needs to, in advance of Dayton dropping his fiscal duke in two weeks.

More on the big picture later today or tomorrow.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 8:08 am and is filed under Big Alt-Media, Chanting Points Memo, Minnesota Politics, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.