Grace Kelly at Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project lets us in on a key facet in the liberal psyche:

They really do believe money grows on trees! 

She assails Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment process:

Perhaps here is why many people thought that unallotment was an empty threat! Balancing the budget through unallotment would violate the rules under which federal dollars match state dollars, resulting in loss of federal matching dollars beyond the unallotment. In this case that meant $72 million of lost federal funding beyond the unallotment.

Right.  That means there’s $72 million dollars that taxpayers in Rhode Island, New Mexico and Mississippi won’t have to fork over to be spent here in Minnesota.

The amount of $72 million comes from Commissioner Hanson’s letter. Check out the copy of MN Government letter from Hanson. An short excerpt is highlighted here from Appendix A.

In a dismal budget year, there’s $72 million that America’s hard-working men and women can keep and spend on things that actually help the economy.

All Republican Governor Pawlenty had to do was come to the bargaining table and give up something to reach a better overall outcome to keep that $72 Million in federal matching funds. I guess what was best for Minnesota would not have made a good sound bite in Pawlenty’s 2012 campaign speeches!

This is one of those things that astounds liberals; it never occurs to them that anyone would want or need to behave differently than a liberal.

Grace (and everyone like her)!  Governor Pawlenty was elected because he was an alternative to irresponsible, economy-leaching, blood-sucking tax-and-spenders!

And then re-elected – almost alone among his GOP constitutional officers – on exactly the same platform!

And if he has any Presidential ambitions, it’s not going to be as someone who grabs his ankles when the DFL tells him to (in the interest of “bipartisanship”, after all); it’ll be because he’s a sharp alternative to the Democrats nationwide.

Thank you, Governor Pawlenty.  If we could hitch heat collectors to the collective brain of Minnesota’s DFL to catch the exhaust heat from all that cognitive dissonance, we could all cut our heating bills 25%.