Dear Neighbors,
This week the House Republicans announced their plans for their Health and Human Services budget. In their plan they want to eliminate health coverage 90,000 Minnesotans on Minnesota Care. They claim they will offer subsidies for those people to sign up for health coverage through MNSure, but they aren’t offering any information as to who will be eligible or what the subsidy amounts will be. It’s puzzling that they want to move 90,000 people to MNSure, but they also want to eliminate MNSure altogether.
And I’ve heard you loud that you want to fix our crumbling transportation infrastructure and prioritize transit. Once again, House Republicans have offered a plan that sounds good until you get into the details. Here is my take on their transportation plan:
I appreciate that the Republicans have moved from a minuscule amount of spending to more than $7 billion over ten years. This is a serious issue that deserves a serious investment, but it needs to be done in a responsible way.
The House Republicans are proposing to spend $7 billion more on roads and bridges without you or anyone else having to pay a single cent more. How could they possibly be able to find an additional $7 billion dollars without anyone having to pay for it as if this money magically appeared out of thin air?
First, the Republican plan would redirect more than $3 billion in proceeds from the general fund. That sounds great, until you know what the general fund is used for. The general fund is what we use to pay for the everyday things our state does. In fact, more than 70% of the money spent from the general fund is spent on educating our kids and making sure people have health care. That’s right, more than $3 billion is going to be taken away from the fund that educates our kids and cares for our ailing loved ones in nursing homes.
Second, they’re going to borrow billions of dollars. That’s right, they want to put billions of dollars on Minnesota’s credit card. In the time that I’ve been at the Capitol, we’ve never borrowed that much money for roads and bridges. Their plan calls for borrowing hundreds of millions more than anyone else has proposed. I think the state should borrows for the big things, like a laboratory at a university, just like we all do with a car loan or a home mortgage. Instead, the Republicans want us to pay interest on billions of dollars for the types of things we should be honest about and budget for like normal families do.
Minnesota did something that set us apart from other states. We decided that we shouldn’t pit fixing roads and bridges against educating our children and we also decided we shouldn’t borrow money to do routine maintenance. So, we created dedicated funds for transportation investments. Those dedicated funds are generated through tab fees and the gas tax, so the people actually using the roads are the ones paying for them. That’s the honest way to budget.
Instead, the Republicans want to spend billions of dollars that they tell us we don’t have to pay for. In reality, we’re hitting our kids with the bill twice: now by taking it from their education and later by sticking them with the credit card bill. I don’t call that “common sense.”
As we finish the last five weeks of the legislative session, please let me know what you think we should do on transportation before we adjourn May 18. You can reach me by phone at (651) 296-4342 or at rep.dan.schoen@house.mn
Sincerely,
Representative Dan Schoen
House District 54A
Grey Cloud Island, Newport, St. Paul Park, Cottage Grove and South St. Paul