LEGISLATION HIGHLIGHTSMinnesota finally has a state budget in place for the upcoming two-year budget cycle. Legislators returned to St. Paul on Monday to approve 14 bills, most of which were budget proposals that fund certain areas within state government, such as transportation, K-12 Education, and human services. You’ll recall that two years ago an all Democrat-led legislature and Governor Walz wasted our $18 billion budget surplus, raised taxes by more than $10 billion, and grew government by 40%. These irresponsible decisions led to what was projected to be the largest future budget deficit in our state’s history. With that in mind, Republicans worked hard this session to prevent tax increases to Minnesota’s families and to cut government growth. In the end, we prevented more than $8 billion in Democrat authored tax increases from becoming law, and we cut state spending by $5 billion, the largest spending cut in Minnesota’s history. We also ended a ridiculous, and expensive, Democrat priority: providing free health insurance to adult illegal immigrants. You’ll recall that in 2023, a Democrat-led legislature and Governor Walz expanded MinnesotaCare eligibility to illegal immigrants. Nearly 20,000 have already enrolled in the past two years (the original estimate was 7,700 over four years), meaning taxpayers are spending $550 million to fund this program for people who should not even be living in the United States. Under a special session compromise, free health Insurance for adult illegal immigrants will be ending on January 1. GOOD NEWS FOR RED WING SCHOOLS Locally, there is also some good news. Our K-12 Education bill includes language that will allow the Red Wing School District to keep “Wingers” as their team name, logo and mascot. Both the district and the Prairie Island Indian Community wanted to keep it – as it is meant to honor Chief Red Wing. KSTP-TV did a story on this recently, which you can view here. State law required schools to ask 11 tribal nations and a special committee if they could keep using their images if they had Native American connections. Red Wing’s application was denied at the time. The change in law would only require the tribal nation closest to the requesting school to approve the ask. Learn more here. IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED While it is good our budget work is complete, and House Republicans were able to hold much of the Democrat agenda in check this session, changes need to be made to the bill negotiation process. I continue to be bothered by the fact that near the end of session, four or five individuals ultimately make agreements behind closed doors on a budget bill if it has stalled in conference committee. I know this has been done for years by governors and legislative leaders by both parties in both bodies, but that doesn’t make it right. This year’s special session is another example. All 14 of these proposals were agreed upon by legislative leadership and the governor’s office before lawmakers learned of their contents, much less the public. Government should be transparent. This “tribunal” process is not, and it needs to be changed. |