Reflections on legislative session from those who would be governor

Republican Rep. Tom Emmer, Democratic House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Democrats Matt Entenza and Mark Dayton and Independence Party's Tom Horner, who want to be governor next year, Monday morning all weighed in on the budget deal and the session that was.

Here are their words:

From Kelliher --

DFLers stood up for Minnesotans. We stood up to Tim Pawlenty and 'Just Say No' Republicans. Standing together Democrats fought for a responsible, balanced budget to protect students, create jobs, and make health care more affordable.
I led DFLers in strong opposition to the governor all session. We stood together. We fought the governor's illegal unallotments, and won. We fixed the fiscal crisis he created.
We fought tooth and nail for every job, every Minnesota family, every student, and every senior in every nursing home. Facing impossible odds, we made real progress.
Standing together, we protected and created more than 50,000 jobs – including 22,000 good paying health care jobs.
We secured $1.4 billion in federal funding to keep our hospitals strong – money from Minnesota taxpayers that would otherwise have gone to other states.
We covered 102,000 Minnesotans, and fixed GAMC. We made tangible reforms that will make health care more affordable for all Minnesotans.We protected our students and the people who teach them from permanent cuts. We protected our senior citizens from any budget cuts.
We met the serious challenges facing Minnesota with leadership and courage. Standing together, we protected the state we love, and the hard working families that make Minnesota great.

From Emmer --

First of all, we should be grateful to Governor Pawlenty for once again protecting Minnesota families and businesses from tax increases. Economic recovery in Minnesota will come faster because we had the strength to hold the line on taxes.
But any recovery will be stopped in its tracks if the next governor "opts in" to Obamacare early by enrolling thousands of Minnesotans onto the federal health care roll at irresponsibly high costs, ignoring Minnesota"s nation-leading reforms in health care delivery.
With this deal, the next governor will have that power. I am announcing today I will not use it if elected this November. I also challenge my opponents (including Speaker Kelliher, who pushed for this power in closed-door negotiations) to tell Minnesotans where they stand on this issue immediately.
In addition to the "opt in" provision to Obamacare, the 2010 session will be remembered as another wasted opportunity due to failed Democrat leadership.
We should have taken this opportunity to redesign our government to provide expected services in a sustainable and sensible manner and we should have taken this opportunity to eliminate redundancies and excess in government. Instead, we have yet again postponed the day of reckoning and kicked the can down the road to the next Governor and the next legislature.
Minnesota expects more. Minnesota deserves more. We are ready, willing and able to take charge of our runaway government in this state. It is time to redesign government to serve the citizens of our great state. It is time for new, fresh and bold ideas. It is time to govern and we are up for the challenge!

From Entenza:

From Horner:

The budget deal negotiated by the Legislature and Governor Pawlenty is a reflection of Tom Emmer's Minnesota with the DFL leadership's seal of approval. The budget defers every major decision to next year while imposing higher costs on businesses and new burdens on schools and cities. Instead of facing up to the hard choices, legislators have created a budget deficit that will be as much as $9 billion in the first year of the new governor's term. Minnesotans will see more school districts going to four-day school weeks, more cities eliminating vital services while raising property taxes and businesses creating fewer new jobs.
This is a budget built on gimmicks and near fraud. It isn't balanced at all. It simply borrows against the future — and puts all the burden of that borrowing on businesses (deferring tax refunds they are owed), school districts (postponing obligated payments) and cities (cutting deeply into local government aid). This is a budget that sets mediocrity as our standard in job creation, education and basic services. Apparently for Emmer and the DFL leadership, Minneso-so is good enough.
That's not the state I want to live in, and Minnesotans should be outraged at how this legislature is bankrupting our future. Emmer and Speaker Kelliher traded responsibility for electability. Minnesota needs a goverrnor who is willing to make the hard choices to honestly balance the budget and invest in job creation, education and innovation, even if that means the next governor only serves one term. That's the commitment I'm making. Emmer and Kelliher have made it clear that their political futures are more important than Minnesota's economic future.
Could Minnesota's current budget have been balanced honestly and without gimmicks? Absolutely, but the process had to start at the beginning of this legislative session, not in the 11th hour. A balanced budget would include revenue from broadening the sales tax base; repealing some of the $11 billion in tax expenditures that go mainly to the wealthy; and, increasing the tobacco tax. A Racino would raise additional dollars while giving Minnesotans who gamble the security of casinos that are publicly regulated. On the spending side, reforming how the state purchases health care (an estimated $750 million in savings, according to experts in government finance and health reform), adopting the Association of Minnesota Counties collaboration proposals (savings of up to $250 million) and reducing JOBZ subsidies would save significant dollars. Other savings could come from eliminating overlapping programs at DEED, imposing a real freeze on government hiring and pay increases, and reforming Local Government Aid to better direct the resources to meet its core purpose of assuring all citizens access to a minimum level of excellence in public services.
These changes, if they had started in 2009, would have fixed the state's $3 billion budget gap without resorting to tricks, deferred payments to schools, cities and businesses, or harming the most vulnerable among us. Long-term — and especially with the state now facing a shortfall of up to $9 billion in the next budget — Minnesota will have to take on even more difficult challenges. Everyone's expectations of government will have to change. No longer can people expect that every problem has a government solution. The new governor will need to be committed to reform, reductions and realignment of priorities. That's a big challenge — one that will take real leadership.

From Dayton:

At the end of a very disappointing legislative session, we again see Minnesota sacrificed on the altar of Gov. Pawlenty's presidential ambitions. The people he's hurt the worst are our schoolchildren forced into more overcrowded classrooms and four‐day school weeks, the poorest of the poor needing health care, and middle class taxpayers facing higher property taxes.
We know the answer to Minnesota's fiscal crisis. If the richest Minnesotans simply paid their fair share of our state's tax burden ‐‐ no more or less than middle class families – the Governor and Legislature could have balanced our budget and funded our schools. But Gov.
Pawlenty's political ambitions wouldn't allow that ‐‐ and sadly the Legislature has gone along with him.
Nearly $2 billion was taken from money promised Minnesota's school districts, thus proving that protecting tax loopholes for the rich is more important to some than educating our school children. Many districts will have to borrow money to pay their bills, since Gov. Pawlenty won't raise the revenues to pay his bills. More borrowing means more teacher layoffs, more overcrowded classrooms, and more children being left behind.
It's time for real answers. Not gimmicks. And as Governor, I promise we will finally force the richest Minnesotans to pay their fair share of taxes, meet our obligations to our children, and put Minnesota back on the path of responsible, progressive leadership.
It will take years for Minnesota to clean up the wreckage from Governor Pawlenty's misguided ideology and ambition. As Governor, I will clean up his mess as fast as I can.

Update