A bridge has collapsed, and others are deteriorating. State highways and city streets are falling apart. Many schools' classrooms are badly overcrowded, and one district is unable even to operate a five-day school week. Students cannot afford tuitions at the state's colleges and universities. Minnesota's unemployment rate has exceeded the nation's for the first time in a quarter-century.

Now the state faces a catastrophic budget deficit. It should sound yet another siren that Minnesota is headed in a profoundly wrong direction.

Those previous indicators of Minnesota's worsening condition seemed not to arouse many alarms. Perhaps they were considered symptomatic of the deteriorating national economy. Perhaps people's expectations for our state's preeminence have diminished. The fact that Gov. Tim Pawlenty's approval rating has remained comfortably high suggests that people's expectations of what the governor and state government should accomplish have fallen drastically.

That is extremely unfortunate, because unless the people of Minnesota collectively demand something better, they are unlikely to get it. And that failure would presage even further declines.

A generation ago, Time magazine praised our state's success as "The Minnesota Miracle." While Time's commendation was deserved, its headline was misleading. Our success was well-earned, not miraculously conferred. We funded excellent public schools and universities statewide; we built and maintained an adequate network of highways to serve expanding businesses and growing communities, and, by many measures, we created an admirably high quality of life for most of our citizens.

Crucial to those and other achievements was our successful state economy. Throughout national economic expansions and downturns, Minnesota's unemployment rate was consistently 2 percent or better below the national average. Per capita income grew, both in real dollars and relative to other states. Increasing employment and rising incomes funded the quality public services that, in turn, provided the foundation for future economic growth.

That formula for success, no matter how well it served most Minnesotans, did not appeal to some Republican politicians, business leaders and other conservatives. Despite Minnesota's economic success, they steadily attacked a "bad business climate." They complained that too-high taxes on wealthy citizens and on businesses, combined with too-favorable (to workers) workers' compensation and unemployment benefits and too-stringent pollution control and environmental-protection laws were driving growing businesses and wealthy individuals away.

They promised that, if those policies were reversed, businesses would create more jobs in Minnesota and the economy would further improve. Wealthy citizens would spend more time and money here. Lower taxes, less regulation and weaker protections, they said, would create a better Minnesota for everyone.

For the past two decades, two Republican governors and one independent/libertarian have enacted those policies. What is the result? They have turned the Minnesota Miracle into the Minnesota Nightmare! This latest budget crisis should drive the final nail into the coffin of their fiscal and policy delusions.

Their lowering taxes for the rich has created a regressive state and local tax structure in which the wealthiest 10 percent of Minnesotans pay a lower percentage of their high incomes in state and local taxes than do the next 60 percent of taxpayers. Many of those beneficiaries have been business decisionmakers. Yet their gains have not translated into better schools, better highways, better jobs or better lives for most other Minnesotans.

Now is a particularly important time to bury this folly, because it is still being shamelessly promoted as the answer to our current fiscal crisis. Pawlenty won't hear of raising taxes only on the rich and profitable. He doesn't even want additional federal money to help reduce the terrible pain Republican policies have inflicted. Once again, the governor's presidential aspirations threaten to trump rational and compassionate policymaking.

When I ran against Sen. Rod Grams in 2000, he and other fiscal conservatives were touting the virtues of a "flat tax," which would have destroyed the progressivity of the federal tax structure. Yet, even a flat tax would be more progressive than Minnesota's state and local tax burden today. For too long, Pawlenty and other Republicans have been allowed to get away with falsely proclaiming that a tax increase on only our wealthiest citizens would be a tax increase on everyone. For too long, some Democrats have been cowed by this falsehood.

The state's budget crisis will not allow this game to continue. The choices facing the governor and legislators are clear. Do they want to protect millionaires or schoolchildren? Are the rich and super-rich needier than the sick and disabled?

It will take some time for Minnesota to recover from national and state policy disasters. The road to recovery, however, does not repeat the mistakes that have created our current nightmare. Minnesotans need and deserve much better than that.

Mark Dayton, a Democrat, is a former U.S. senator from Minnesota.