ST. PAUL, MN – Minnesota House Republican leaders released their budget targets for the 2016-17 biennium this [Tuesday] morning. The targets announced for each fiscal committee amounted to a budget of just under $40 billion in state spending, but the priorities of GOP leaders contrasted widely with those of Governor Mark Dayton and DFL House members, including State Rep. Jennifer Schultz (DFL – Duluth).
Rep. Schultz noted major concerns about unsustainable corporate tax expenditures, over $1 billion in cuts to health care programs, and the uncertainty that the GOP targets would bring to future budgeting.
“I’m trying to approach this budget with Minnesota’s economy in mind,” said Schultz. “Our history of economic success is based on investment in the people of Minnesota: infrastructure, education, and research. These budget targets don’t serve those goals like they should, because Republicans can’t get around the fact that their first priority is to give tax cuts to their corporate allies.”
Rep. Schultz said that as Minnesota leads the region in job growth and economic performance, states like Wisconsin that have tried the cuts only approach have faced inevitable declines in economic success for working families and public institutions like schools, public health insurance plans, and colleges and universities.
“I’m especially concerned about the unrealistic expectations that the GOP has of our health care programs,” said Schultz. “There is no free lunch; there is no huge pool of billions of dollars of individual health care fraud and waste hiding out there. We always need to ensure programs are operating efficiently, but to fantasize that we will be able to fund $1 billion in state needs by finding an imaginary treasure trove of waste is exactly that, a fantasy. It’s an insult to the hard-working Minnesotans who need these health care programs to make their family budgets work. They’re not the bad guys.”
DFL leaders said that giving away a surplus they worked hard to create would only send the state into another cycle of budget deficits and painful program cuts.
“The GOP’s willingness to give away $2 billion to a small number of wealthy Minnesotans is a mistake the state will pay for in Wisconsin-style budget crises, economic stagnation, and belt tightening by ordinary Minnesotans,” said Rep. Schultz. “We must invest in ourselves and our working families. That is how Minnesota has succeeded in the past and will succeed in the future.”