Republicans continue push for early state budget cuts

Republicans continued Monday to push Gov. Mark Dayton to accept nearly $1 billion in spending cuts, quickly making adjustments to a proposal that will likely be passed by the House and Senate this week.Before adopting the plan, a House-Senate conference committee did however make some substantive changes to their proposal. The panel, which was dominated by Republicans, jettisoned a proposed state government employee wage freeze, and also lowered to $100 million a plan to have state agencies cut spending by the end of June.In addition, an estimated $487 million in local government aid cuts would be over a two-year period, and would not be made permanent under the legislation. Despite pledges to work with Dayton to solve the state's $6.2 billion budget deficit, Monday's meeting indicated that Republicans will quickly push their first phase, $1 billion budget reduction proposal in front of Dayton in order to get it included in a state revenue forecast slated for later this month."We're trying to help here, and we're not trying to be confrontational," said Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, R-Lakeville, who co-chaired the conference committee and chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. "We believe that when you run out of money, you need to stop spending."Holberg defended the Republicans' early, partial approach to cutting the state deficit. "Do you have a 10,000-foot mountain to climb, or [do] you have an 8,000-foot mountain to climb? I know which one I'd pick," she said.But Dayton, who is scheduled to release his budget on Feb. 15, had called the Republicans' strategy a "piecemeal approach", and had advocated a more comprehensive strategy to solving the state's budget deficit. Katharine Tinucci, a spokesperson for the governor, said Dayton was reviewing Monday's conference committee action. "He's already made very clear that any budget solution must be a complete solution," she said.