"Feel good" meeting with Pawlenty on bonding doesn't make Senate chair feel good

They came, they met and they don't feel good.

The chairs of the committees charged with crafting the measure to build state projects had a brief meeting with Gov. Tim Pawlenty Wednesday afternoon but didn't walk away with much.

"Obviously he'd like us to go down, we'd like him to go up. It doesn't take a meeting to decide that" said state Senate Capitol Investment chair Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon."It was just more of a feel good thing,"

So, he was asked, do you feel good?

"No," Langseth said.

The governor's main message?

"The bill is too big and it's got stuff in it I don't like," said House Capitol Investment chair Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul. Hausman said she expected a bonding bill conference committee to start meeting tomorrow or Friday on Friday. She said two projects Pawlenty singled out as ones he didn't like: public safety training facilities in Scott County and in Marshall. Both happen to be in Republican House member's districts.

McClung reiterated after the meeting that the governor thinks the House and Senate bills -- which are a near or over $1 billion -- are too big and doesn't include the right projects. The Legislature's bills include too many projects McClung termed "fluff."

He also suggested lawmakers are "incapable of saying 'no.'"

"You can't just go out and slap together a bill that spends $1 billion or more and run around and be Santa Claus to everybody and then send the bill to Gov. Pawlenty and ask him to be Scrooge," McClung said.

Although lawmakers say a larger bill would create more jobs, McClung said those jobs cost the state too much. He quoted the estimate that each job created would cost $100,000 in state borrowing, a figure Democrats in the Legislature. Democrats have estimated their measures would create 21,000 jobs.

"We want to put people to work but they want to spend money the state doesn't have. We want to be fiscally responsible," McClung said.

"When you have no money in your wallet and in fact you owe somebody $1.2 billion, even coming up with another five bucks is difficult," McClung said.

In the short term, Pawlenty wants to cut taxes for corporations and some small businesses. Those cuts and a tax incentive for those who invest in start ups would cost the state about $20 million in this biennium.

"We do the tax cuts because we need to grow jobs in Minnesota," McClung said.

McClung did not have an estimate for how many jobs the tax cuts Pawlenty's outlined would create this year.