HOUSE DEMOCRAT START OF SESSION HOLDOUT PROVES COSTLY
At the beginning of the 2025 session, I wrote that this was going to be yet another “historic” session.
Boy, was it.
With the House tallying 67 Republicans and 67 Democrats, most of us knew compromises were going to be necessary in order to move any bills forward. The problem was we couldn’t make any compromises for weeks as House Democrats refused to show up for work for 23 days, collecting their legislative paychecks that entire time.
In hindsight, those 23 days of nothingness have proven to be very costly now that the 2025 session has ended, and a good share of our budget work remains unfinished.
If there’s any good news to come from this, it’s that we won’t be entering a special session starting from scratch. Late last week, legislative leaders and Governor Walz announced that an agreement had been reached on a state budget framework.
That framework will provide the largest cut to government spending in state history. It will eliminate nearly half of the projected budget deficit Democrats created when they grew government by 40% and raised taxes by $10 billion two years ago. In fact, no Minnesota family will see a tax increase from state government this year.
With leadership having agreed on the broad parameters of our next budget, joint House/Senate conference committees worked on the specifics within their respective areas within government. During the final weekend of session, we approved several of these compromise finance proposals, such as public safety, agriculture, and state government. But others, like the health and transportation conference committees, came close but did not finalize agreements before adjournment, which means a special session is needed to finish things up.
I believe the governor will only call a special session when agreements have been reached on all of the outstanding budget bills and am expecting that will happen before the end of May.
I will be sure to keep you updated on the progress we make and will provide you with some highlights next month once special session concludes.