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Minnesota House of Representatives

State Representative Denny McNamara

359 State Office BuildingState Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-3135

For more information contact: Jason Wenisch 651-296-2317

Posted: 2010-03-26 00:00:00
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NEWS COLUMN

NEWS AND VIEWS WITH REP. DENNY McNAMARA

Hello from St. Paul,

There was good news and bad news, in my opinion, from the State Capitol this past week.

First, the positive: On March 24, the Minnesota Legislature approved a nation-leading health reform plan that replaces the General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) health plan, which had been growing at completely unsustainable levels.

GAMC provided health insurance to the poorest of the poor, and this newly approved program will do the same – at a savings of about $700 million to Minnesota’s taxpayers.

For a change, it was nice to see overwhelming bipartisan support from the legislature and the administration for a significant piece of legislation. Finally, my faith was somewhat restored that we in the legislature can work together in a bipartisan fashion and accomplish real government reform.

On March 22, the Minnesota House approved a measure that begins to address our $993 million state budget deficit. It makes nearly $300 million in budget cuts to every area of state government except K-12 education and health and human services.

Unlike the health care legislation we approved, this proposal contained little to no reform. This was a huge disappointment. Several ideas for cost savings were offered and these reforms would have made government work better and help restrain ever-increasing government spending. But nearly every time we would try to improve the bill, the House majority would either block our attempts to vote on the reform or simply shoot down the proposal.

This continued partisan power trip gets frustrating. As a small business owner, if I saw a problem that needed fixing I’d work with fellow coworkers to find a common sense solution and fix it. Unfortunately in the Legislature these days, that sensible way of working together doesn't happen often enough.

More disappointing is that we are not seriously addressing our long term budget problem. Next year, lawmakers will need to eliminate a projected $5.8 billion shortfall. If we reformed spending in even a few areas of government that number would drop. To date, this hasn’t happened.

We’ve been told that health and human services and K-12 education budget bills will be debated on the House floor in the coming weeks. I’ll keep you updated on their progress.

On another topic, last week our House email server crashed and I was unable to access, send, or retrieve emails for four days. I was almost caught up on my resident correspondence prior to the incident, but I did have roughly 20 active emails where I was looking into information for constituents that were lost as a result of the server crash.

So, if you attempted to email me over the past few days and have not heard back, this is the reason why. My email is now up and running again so please feel free to resume correspondence. The address is rep.denny.mcnamara@house.mn. Thanks for your patience.

Keep in touch,

Denny

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