Again – as I predicted, the DFL will try to make the “case” against Governor Pawlenty’s budget cuts by framing it as scary, scary stuff, while ignoring the immense amount of waste pork and patronage that is just begging to be clear-cut from the budget.

Dave Mindemann at mnpACTed! delivers, true to form:

So, let it be his. We will have to take the pain but maybe the citizens of this state will get the real picture once and for all. As the hospitals close, rural areas lose health care facilities, nursing homes cut back, state employees join the welfare rolls, more people lose health insurance, building projects get scrapped… maybe then the voters will fully understand what they have gotten.

Perhaps, but probably not the way folks like Mindemann, the DFL and the mainstream media (pardon the serial redundancy) think they will.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to think back to 1989.  We had hospitals.  Rural areas had health care.  Old folks had nursing homes.  State employees managed support themselves (with good reason, since we were a high tax, high “service” state back then, too); people had health insurance; stuff got built.

And as the prosperity of the Nineties (thanks, Reagan and Gingrich!) switched Minnesota’s economy to “puree”, we had years of higher-than-projected tax receipts, leading to surpluses.  Which serial DFL legislatures turned into more permanent spending.

So when Carlson left office, the budget had doubled.  But we still had hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, insurance and schools.

Right?

And then the four years of the Ventura Administration, which started with epic surpluses.  Which were mostly converted to more permanent spending.  Until the recession of ’01, when the prosperity gravy train (for government) ended.

But even at that time, we had hospitals, schools, clinics, state workers buying houses and cars and not living out of boxes – the works.

So far so good?

And in the past six years, the budget has not shrunk; it’s risen, through good times and bad.  Slower, now, perhaps, but it’s still by any standards a huge friggin’ budget, compared to 20 years ago.

And so yes, Dave Mindemann; the people of Minnesota might just wonder “why am I paying vastly more in taxes now than 20 years ago, and getting the same “services”, and being threatened with losing the “basics” even as I pay more and more and more at all levels of government taxation?

The DFL chooses to try to terrorize Minnesotans into submission.  This state is the world’s largest case of Stockholm Syndrome.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 11:46 am and is filed under Minnesota Politics. 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.