Dear Neighbor,
The House has been on the floor many hours this week discussing omnibus finance bills the House Democrat majority has put forward in the process of setting a new state budget.
All of these bills were approved mainly on party lines, with Democrats voting for them and Republicans in opposition. I voted against each and the hope is each of the bills is improved by joint House-Senate conference committees before coming back for a vote on final approval.
While much of the discussion comes down to dollars and cents, we also have been going over some rather controversial policy subjects. For example, the K-12 bill includes a sex education mandate that has drawn strong objections. It runs against current law that emphasizes abstinence and lets Planned Parenthood write the curriculum, featuring borderline pornographic material that could be presented to our children by unlicensed, uncertified people brought into schools for this purpose.
I strongly oppose this proposal and we in the minority offered amendments to remove this section from the bill, or to allow schools the choice of opting out of this curriculum. Unfortunately, those amendments were blocked.
A jobs/energy omnibus bill also came to the floor this week. It is full of tax increases, fees and regulations that would increase energy costs.
The paid leave proposal in the bill includes an estimated $1.6 billion in new taxes and would create 400 new, full-time state employees to run the program. This bill would raise billions in new taxes on Minnesota employer and employees, creating a new tax on our paychecks, even if they already have benefits they enjoy.
The bill also features a 100-percent renewable mandate by 2050 that would likely result in increased costs and a less reliable energy grid. The Star Tribune recently reported on the technology and cost challenges associated with this.
Today, we are discussing the Democrats’ health and human services omnibus bill, which raises health care costs, cuts funding for nursing homes and adds a tax on insulin. It also does not do enough to address fraud in child care and other public programs.
The bill cuts nursing home rates by $68 million. The provider tax on health care would add an estimated $2.5 billion to the cost of our health care over the next four years, while the insulin tax would add $42 million in costs over that same span.
Several more omnibus finance bills are set to come to the floor as well, with bills related to taxes, transportation and agriculture among the next we expect to hear. Look for more on those soon and have a good weekend.
Sincerely,
Paul