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State Representative Joe Hoppe
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-5066
For more information contact: Jodi Boyne 651-296-0640
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
2007 Session Addressed the Very Basic
By Joe Hoppe
To the editor,
The first and foremost duty for lawmakers during the 2007 legislative session was to pass a balanced budget. We did that, agreeing to spend about $34.6 billion over the next two years without raising taxes. Of course, that doesn’t mean there were no attempts to raise taxes. Quite the opposite. There were proposals to raise sales taxes, raise income taxes on everyone, raise income taxes on some people but not others, raise gas taxes, create a new gift tax and even tax cellular phones. What about tax relief?
Any real chance at tax relief fell by the wayside early. With Democrats now in control of the House and Senate, Governor Pawlenty realized that across-the-board tax relief wasn’t going to happen. So, he left it out of his January budget proposal. It would be the first of many compromises. The new Democratic majorities tried their hand at tax relief with no success.
After the session ended, Governor Pawlenty vetoed the entire tax bill, which included tens of millions of dollars for local governments. Democrats say property taxes will go up without the money, but our cities receive exactly $0 of local government aid, so it’s hard to see how it will affect our property taxes at all. In fact, I would make the case that the veto is actually good for our taxpayers. We’re the ones who fund local government aid without getting any in return, so not having to pay more to get the same is, in my view, a win.
Looking beyond the basic numbers, the budget lacks any sense of reform or a clear vision for Minnesota’s future. In the past we were able to do budgets with major welfare reforms or new accountability standards for government performance. Those things were not only absent this year, some of them were undone. I’m very upset to see eight years of welfare reform thrown away and replaced with huge welfare spending increases. It is bad for taxpayers because they will ultimately be asked to shoulder the burden as welfare costs are set to skyrocket in the next for years. But I also think it the wrong way to help people in need, we should be helping them become less dependent on the government, not the other way around.
The next legislative session won’t start until February 2008, but I hope it will be more focused and reform-minded than the session we just completed. A budget that spends more without doing more is, in my view, a lot of tax money wasted.
Sincerely,
Joe Hoppe
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