There are bills to boost funding for Reading Corps by more than $5 million; $1 million to prevent tractor rollovers; and another $15 million to expand Head Start school programs. There are countless more without firm price tags. And Gov. Mark Dayton himself has requested $100 million for broadband Internet development and another $6 million to offer state employees paid parental leave.<\/p>\n
It illustrates the political and financial reality that even a $1 billion-plus surplus can only go so far. And while it may be less painful than making cuts to close budget gaps, extra cash just leaves politicians with more to argue over.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And there’s this absolutely precious quote by former Senate majority leader and gubernatorial candidate Roger Moe:<\/p>\n
\n\n\u201cThe average person who watches the process would think that it would be easier if you have a budget surplus \u2026 than shortfalls. It\u2019s probably the opposite,\u201d said Roger Moe, a former state senator and longtime Democratic majority leader. \u201cThat puts more pressure on the Legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Well, no, Senator Moe.<\/p>\n
The average person\u00a0who is remotely literate about government\u00a0<\/em>looks at that surplus and thinks “that’s money that’s been over-taxed; give it back”.<\/p>\n
The DFL and media (pardon the redundancy), beholden as they are to the notion that money that\u00a0people\u00a0<\/em>earn is government property first and foremost, never, ever put that out there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Minnesota Legislature – and in this case, mostly the DFL caucuses in the legislature – are trying to figure out how to spend the roughly billion-dollar surplus. Sound familiar? There are bills to boost funding for Reading Corps by more than $5 million; $1 million to prevent tractor rollovers; and another $15 million to […]<\/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-57593","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\/57593","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=57593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57594,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57593\/revisions\/57594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}