DFL leaders of the House and Senate Tuesday would not say whether they support the tax increases in DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget.<\/p>\n
House Minority Leader Paul Thissen and Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, both of whom ran for governor last year, were asked multiple times, in various ways, whether they would back, vote for or want to run on the proposed $4 billion in tax increases and they refused to give a yes or no.<\/p>\n
They said it was an honest budget that was better than what Republicans could offer but, despite repeated chances, did not say they supported it.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nNow, this can mean anything – or nothing.<\/p>\n
Still, you’d think the DFL would want a little <\/em>more love for the gov, right?<\/p>\nOne exchange:<\/p>\n
Question: “Do you support the tax increases in this bill?”<\/p>\n
Thissen: “The governor is delivering on what he promised. We have always been in our DFL caucus in favor of a solution that is going to be fair…We need to look at the details of it. I think the most important thing now to look at is asking the Republicans, okay, what’s your answer.”<\/p>\n
Another exchange:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Stassen-Berger – whom I’ve certainly criticized in this space before, and will no doubt criticize again – runs through two more such exchanges; go read ’em.<\/p>\n
I’ve been calling Dayton a very, very weak governor. \u00a0It could very well be I’m right…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the GOP, as we’ve noted, is underwhelmed with Dayton’s budget; since they control both chambers of the legislature, it’s pretty much toast. But the DFL is right behind the governor – yeah? Well, maybe not. Rachel Stassen-Berger did something more capitol reporters should oughtta do; asked some questions (emphasis added): DFL leaders of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18177,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173\/revisions\/18177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}