Gov.-elect Mark Dayton sees some areas of comprimise on the horizon as he prepares to broker a budget with the Republican-led Legislature.
Appearing on Bloomberg Television during a tour of the East Coast, Dayton said he is willing to negotiate his definition of wealthy and "turn all the revenue and expenditure cards face up on the table" to solve the state's deficit dilemma.
"Everything will be negotiable," Dayton said of the income brackets affected by his tax plan, "because that's the nature of the process, especially with a Republican Legislature."
Dayton has already downgraded his pledge to raise education funding every year, saying he will "do [his] utmost." He also told a poverty dinner last week that "it's going to be very difficult to enact the [anti-poverty] initiatives that I proposed in my campaign."
Why? Republican leaders have so far indicated they will be taking a hard line against raising taxes -- a key facet of Dayton's budget plans during the campaign. During the Bloomberg interview, however, Dayton warned that a budget solution without tax increases would have serious consequences.
"I campaigned on a pledge that I would reduce the regressivity of Minnesota's state and local taxes and ask upper income Minnesotans to pay closer to their appropriate share -- the same amount as everybody else," Dayton said.
"Republicans don't think that's such a great idea, but they're going to find it's very difficult to cut $6.2 billion -- which is about 19 percent of our budget -- without drastically affecting especially education, which is almost half of the state expenditure."
Either way, he said, "it's going to be very painful, there's no way around it."
