{"id":4273,"date":"2009-02-24T06:52:54","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T11:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4273"},"modified":"2009-02-24T06:52:54","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T11:52:54","slug":"gross-expenditures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4273","title":{"rendered":"Gross Expenditures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring looks at the Minnesota Budget Deficit – six billion and counting – on the one hand, and the zooming cost of DFL legislators’ per diems on the other, and notes:<\/a><\/p>\n

it\u2019s come to the public\u2019s attention that DFL members of the legislature were paid a substantial amount of per diem for out-of-session hearings and meetings.On the Senate side, the top 16 DFL legislators were paid a grand total of $99,648 for out-of-session hearings and meetings. With senators getting paid $96 per day in per diem, that\u2019s a total of 1,038 days of out-of-session per diem paid.<\/p>\n

On the House side, the 14 biggest amounts of out-of-session per diem were paid to DFL representatives. The total amount of out-of-session per diem paid to these representatives is $65,142. Dividing the $65,142 by the $77 per day per diem payment gives you a total of 846 days of out-of-session hearings and meetings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s got some questions:<\/p>\n

There are several reasons why I\u2019m highlighting these per diem payments, the most important of which is to ask these questions:<\/p>\n

* What work product did these DFL legislators produce during these hearings and meetings?
\n* Did the DFL give a high priority to gathering important budgetary information during these meetings?
\n* Did the DFL give a high priority to finding solutions to the budget deficit the highest priority of these hearings? If the DFL didn\u2019t put a high priority on that, why didn\u2019t they?
\n* Did the DFL give a high priority to identifying spending that was spent on wants, not needs? If the DFL didn\u2019t put a high priority on that, why didn\u2019t they?
\n* Did the DFL put a high priority on finding ways to save money without reducing service levels? If the DFL didn\u2019t put a high priority on that, why didn\u2019t they?
\n* How many hours did these legislators work, on average, each of these 1,884 work days? Less than 4 hours on average? Was it 4-8 hours? Was it more than 8 hours a day?<\/p>\n

The reason why your answers to these questions are so important to me is to know that the legislature is doing its fair share of work in finding solutions to Minnesota\u2019s budget deficit. If you aren\u2019t part of the solution, then you\u2019re really just putting up an unneeded, and unwanted, roadblock in the solution process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, that’d be a shock, wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n

Still, Gary notes that he’d like the legislators – especially the cash-guzzling DFL majority – to hear those questions.\u00a0 Over, and over, and over again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring looks at the Minnesota Budget Deficit – six billion and counting – on the one hand, and the zooming cost of DFL legislators’ per diems on the other, and notes: it\u2019s come to the public\u2019s attention that DFL members of the legislature were paid a substantial amount of per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273","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=4273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}