There’s a blizzard coming in from the southwest.

A blizzard of common sense, that is. Senators Ortman and Roebling, and Representative Hoppe have introduced an amendment requiring the state budget to be not only “balanced”, but in fact statutorily two percent inside our means; government spending would be liminted to 98 percent of revenues:

“This amendment establishes spending limits based on current law revenue sources,” said Senator Ortman. “The proposed amendment also ensures steady and reliable budget reserves by directing excess dollars into the reserve, which cannot be spent except in emergencies involving health, safety or welfare of citizens of Minnesota.”

There’d be my one quibble; that’s $600 million per biennium that should, by all rights, stay with the taxpayers.

But it’s a great start.

Senator Ortman added: “This is a positive solution for Minnesota’s spending problem. State Government budgets in the 21st Century cannot maintain a 1970’s tax-and-spend mentality. We should limit spending to only 98 percent of the actual funds available, which will force prioritization of spending that is long overdue.”…

Here’s the important part (emphasis added):

…“We have more government than we can afford; this amendment will end the problem of auto-pilot growth in our state budget,” said Senator Ortman.

“If we would have had this amendment in place, we would not be in such a difficult financial situation now,” said Senator Robling, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

This is a must-pass.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 at 7:19 am and is filed under MN Legislature. 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.