How soon people forget…

…well, no.  How soon the DFL and its stenographers in the mainstream Minnesota media try to make them forget. 

The GOP-majority legislature in 2011 and 2012 bounced the state back from a (let’s take the Democrat-controlled bureaucracy at its word) $6 Billion-and-change deficit to an $800 million surplus, without raising taxes.  Had they followed the Tea Party freshmens’ advice, and held spending at 2010 levels, it would have likely been more like $2 Billion – but that’s water under the bridge for now.  They also tried to use some of that money to pay back the “school budget shift” – a DFL-designed accounting gimmick that operated entirely as a chanting point for the DFL – but Governor Dayton Messinger vetoed it to hold it out there as an election-year rhetorical cudgel. 

But it’s another year.  And a DFL controlled legislature.

And after increasing taxes by two billion dollars – many of which haven’t kicked in yet – the DFL is taking full credit for a “Billion dollar surplus”. 

Let’s make sure we’re clear on the compare-and-contrast, here:

• The GOP, without raising taxes, moved moved the revenue needle seven billion dollars (although two billion got eaten up by additional spending the DFL demanded via Governor Dayton Messinger. 
• The DFL, in one year, took an additional two billion dollars out of the productive economy and handed it to government – leaving us with a grand total of $200 million in additional surplus.   And remember – the worst of the DFL’s taxes haven’t even started yet. 

That of course begs a question – concluding that a surplus is a good thing.  It’s not; it’s money taken out of the productive economy.  That billion dollars is money the State of Minnesota thinks it deserves more than you – the person who actually earned it. 

The DFL is going to do its best to obscure that – because for all of their endzone-happy-dancing, it’s really not all that good.