Minnesota House of Representatives

Accessibility menu

Menu

Minnesota House of Representatives

State Representative Paul Rosenthal

501 State Office BuildingState Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-7803

For more information contact: Joan Nichols 651-29X-XXXX

Posted: 2009-03-25 00:00:00
Share on: 



Column/LTE

Let’s Talk about Budgets on the Table

Dear Editor:

We started the 2009 Legislative Session passing legislation into law that requires the Governor and the Legislature to balance the next biennium budget as required by the state Constitution as well as the 2011-12 budget.
All budgets are now on the table for discussion, so let’s talk about what is actually being proposed by the Governor, the Senate and the House to resolve our state’s long-term problems.
Both the Senate and the House have presented four year plans that balance the budget by either breaking even or leaving the state with a small surplus. Both legislative bodies prioritized their budgets based on the concept of shared sacrifice to help fix our structural budget deficit problem. The Senate employed a 7 percent, across-the board spending cuts, while the House made strategic cuts and delayed payments to hold education harmless.
The Governor’s plan delays our budget problems to the next budget cycle by relying on an expensive borrowing habit and using one-time federal stimulus money that leads Minnesotans down a short-sighted road that ends in a $2.6 billion dollar deficit at the start of the 2011-12 budget cycle.
It’s apparent the Governor’s budget is neither legal nor realistic whereas the Senate and House offer responsible, honest approaches that deal with Minnesota’s debt problems now rather than pass them on to our children.

News Items

Audio & Video

Galleries

No image galleries found

Minnesota House of Representatives  ·   100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Saint Paul, MN   55155   ·   Webmaster@house.mn