Describing "a breakout strategy" to end a budget stalemate, Gov. Tim Pawlenty Sunday offered to accept fewer cuts in social services for the poor if the DFL-controlled Legislature agreed to drop plans for surcharges on hospitals and health plans and their plan to shift the poor onto Medicaid.
Pawlenty emerged late Sunday afternoon from his office at the Capitol to say Republicans could do without cutting an additional $114 million from health and human services if the DFL would agree to drop its plan for early transfers of the poor from state health programs to federal Medicaid, and to abandon the surcharge idea.
Pawlenty said his plan is based on the assumption that $408 million in federal jobs money promised the state materializes. If not, he said he'd call for a limited special session to deal with health and human services.
House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher appeared outside the governor's office just minutes before Pawlenty to signal the offer, which she and Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller took back to the DFL caucus for consideration. A response was expected within a few hours.
Neither Kelliher nor Pogemiller voiced opinions about Pawlenty's proposal.
The governor said he offered the plan as a way to break an impasse that had solidified over the weekend on the subject of health care for the poor.
