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Legislative News and Views - Rep. Kathy Lohmer (R)

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Legislative Update (April 4, 2014)

Friday, April 4, 2014

Dear Neighbor,

On Thursday, the House passed a large omnibus spending bill costing taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next few years. After increasing taxes by $2.1 billion and increasing spending by about $4 billion during the 2013 Legislative Session as well as authorizing the construction of a $90 million office building for state senators, I’m not sure how much more government spending the taxpayers of Minnesota can afford.

While a few provisions of the bill were worthy of support, I could not vote for the overall 436-page package of unrelated policy and spending proposals. What was most concerning to me about this legislation was the backdoor bailout of Obamacare. Specifically, this bill authorizes taking $442 million from the General Fund in fiscal year 2016-2017 to refill the Healthcare Access Fund, a fund created to increase access to health care for the uninsured, because of a hole created by increased costs of Obamacare.

During the debate, Republicans offered several amendments to increase accountability and transparency of MNsure – the Minnesota agency charged with implementing Obamacare. One amendment would have made MNsure plan charges and enrollment information available by September 1 instead of mid-November. Unfortunately, the Democrat majority voted to block debate and an up-or-down vote on anything related to MNsure claiming that the amendments were not “germane” – meaning not relevant – to the bill before the floor despite the fact it had health and human services provisions.

In order to improve this bill, I supported efforts put forward by my Republican colleagues that would have put $65 per-pupil on the basic formula for K-12 Education, fully funded the 5% rate increase for disability care workers, and increased penalties even stronger for sex offenders than what the Democrats proposed to do. Unfortunately, the Democrats didn’t take any of these proposals.

Instead of scrambling to spend the surplus money taken from taxpayers on a long wish list, I would have preferred to have funded a few key priorities and returned the remaining surplus to those who paid the money in – the hardworking taxpayers of Minnesota.

As always, I am interested in your feedback. Please feel free to contact me by e-mail at Rep.Kathy.Lohmer@House.MN or contact my office at 651-296-4244. You can also send mail to my office address: 239 State Office Building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55155.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Kathy

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