Let's turn back the clock to 2001 when Minnesota faced a budget crisis.  Tim Pawlenty was the majority leader of the House of Representatives when the Republican House teamed up with Roger Moe and the Democratic Senate and gave us the first of many phoney budeget fixes.

Minnesota is now facing a 5 billion dollar budget deficit.  The budget has to be balanced by law and we just got the first taste of how Governor Pawlenty plans on balancing our budget.  His plan calls for budget shifts in k-12 spending, borrowing agianst the tobacco settlement money in the form of bonding and tax cuts for businesses.  To his credit he does actually cut spending by kicking off low income single people from health care, cutting Higher Education Funding and cutting funding to lower levels of government.  The gimickes that he uses reminds me of the phoney budget fix that was used in 2001 that was passed over the veto by Governor Ventura.  We all know what happened to State finances after that budget was finally adopted. Pawlenty wants to kick people off of heath care, give businesses tax cuts and pass the pain off to higher education and local government.  Way to go Governor Pawlenty.

Now it is up to our Democratic friends to see what their solution to this mess will be.  I hope that they will take this deficit seriously and offer real solutions to this crisis.  I am afraid that I will not be holding my breath.


Dean Barkley