Dear Neighbor,
A movie titled “The Bad and the Ugly” is just plain missing something. So is the 2014 session.
Where is the Good?
Here we are, some six weeks and 3,000 bills into a session that has brought us little more than government creep, more spending and a pile of new regulations. And, to think, Gov. Mark Dayton and fellow Democrats once looked us in the eye and called this the “Unsession.”
Who were they kidding?
I doubted it back then and am watching it unfold today. Yes, it’s great we have cut some taxes that, ahem, those same Democrats passed last year. That will make a great lit piece this fall, but it’s only a start.
Go ahead, Democrats, and find an irrelevant state board to cut and call yourselves the party of small government while you’re at it.
Leopards still have spots. MNsure? That’s a spot. Actually, it’s a sore spot. This government-run health insurance program is more than six months old and the enrollment deadline has passed, yet we still have more questions than answers as to what is wrong.
Even the feds are getting in the act. There is a congressional investigation underway to uncover Dayton’s and the Democrats’ failures in trying to build Obamacare in Minnesota. Our governor, the guy who championed this abysmal project, received a letter from D.C. which, in part, reads:
“It is clear that the Minnesota exchange has failed to live up to expectations. Despite receiving over $155 million dollars in federal grants to set up its ObamaCare exchange, the exchange has managed to enroll only approximately 38,000 people. Put differently, for every person enrolled by the exchange, federal taxpayers gave the state approximately $5,000.”
This is sad. I know there are people who were rooting for MNsure’s failure, but this is no time to gloat over its continued failings. We are talking about hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars at stake. This is a real problem and I’m not sure there is a fix. There are cracks in MNsure’s foundation so deep people on the other side of this planet can see them.
The short of it is this: The sooner we get out of St. Paul this session, the better. This one-party control is getting us nowhere other than deeper in spending and more regulations. I really look forward to a new landscape in the 2015 session so we can make real progress in making government more efficient and accountable.
Take care, good luck and please continue providing me with feedback on the issues.
Sincerely,
Mark