Legislative Update: Omnibus Bill Season in St. Paul; The MN Student Survey

Omnibus Bill Season in St. Paul

Right now, the Democrat majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives is hastily trying to pass massive omnibus bills that will increase state spending by $7.36 billion. These omnibus bills contain hundreds and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different provisions. These bills are full of bad policy and totally unnecessary spending.

In June of 2021, the Minnesota Legislature authorized a two-year state budget for 2022-23 which totaled $51.7 billion. This $51.7 billion budget was a 10% increase in spending from the previous two-year budget for 2020-21. Now, if the Democrats’ proposed spending increase of $7.36 billion were to pass into law, our current two-year budget would balloon to over $59 billion – a 25% increase from our 2020-21 state budget.

So far, the Minnesota House of Representatives has passed five omnibus bills: the Agriculture, Broadband, and Housing omnibus bill; the Transportation, State Government, Pensions, and Veterans & Military Affairs omnibus bill; the Early Education and E-12 Education omnibus bill; the Environment and Natural Resources omnibus bill; and the Higher Education omnibus bill.

I did not vote for any of these bills, and I will not vote in favor of any of the remaining omnibus bills. State government shouldn’t be increasing spending by over $7 billion. Fortunately, the Republicans in the Minnesota Senate will keep these bad bills from becoming law.  

We Must Stop the MN Student Survey

On Wednesday, I brought an amendment to the Education omnibus bill that would place parents, through their elected legislators, in control of the Minnesota Student Survey (MSS).

As I’ve mentioned before, the Minnesota Student Survey is a statewide questionnaire that asks young students subversive questions about topics such as sex, gender identity, drugs, and alcohol. Multiple agencies of state government conspire every three years to administer the Minnesota Student Survey (MSS) in classrooms across the state. These agencies do this even though there is no explicit authorization for them to do so from the Minnesota Legislature.

In my view, we cannot have rogue agencies dreaming up social experiments and trying them out on our children. The elected officials of the people get to set policy in this state, not unaccountable bureaucracies. As such, I authored an amendment that would give only the Minnesota Legislature the power to authorize or not authorize statewide student surveys.  

In my speech on the House floor, I read some of the shocking and reprehensible questions that are contained in the MSS. Additionally, I explained the details of my amendment. A portion of that speech is below:

Unfortunately, the radical Democrats in the Minnesota House of Representatives voted against my amendment and kept it from passing.

Steve Drazkowski