DFL leadership is salivating thinking about passing a $1,000,000,000 bonding bill when they should be prioritizing fixing Minnesota’s economy:

House Speaker and 2010 gubernatorial candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, said during one of the flurry of press conferences following Wednesday’s release of the November economic forecast that she would like to see the bill make its way through the House within the first few weeks of the session, which begins Feb. 4.

“The two biggest advantages of passing a bill early have to do with Minnesota’s economy, and the fact that there are a lot of Minnesotans in the construction trades, the building trades and related architectural trades out of work right now,” said Kelliher, who announced the formation of a bipartisan jobs task force in August to help spur job growth. “To really make any sort of impact for next year, passing the bill early will be important.”

The DFL always thinks of the bonding bill as their jobs bill. It should be thought of as a repairs and build a few new things bill. The bill hasn’t added permanent jobs in forever. I quoted the STrib’s Pat Doyle in this post as saying this:

So what should McElroy’s Department of Employment and Economic Development be doing that it’s not?

“Create jobs,” Pogemiller said.

Government efforts to create jobs have had limited positive impact.

St. Cloud Rep. Steve Gottwalt offered this opinion of what does and what doesn’t create jobs:

It’s tough to create jobs with ANY state program where the taxes and regulations on businesses just keep increasing! Sen. Pogemiller should be held accountable for the manner in which DFLers have helped shackle a huge ball and chain around the ankles of DEED and Minnesota businesses with their endless push for tax increases, cap-and-tax, fees, undue regulatory burdens and massive expansions of government programs. Minnesota’s business tax and regulatory climate is ranked among the ten worst in the
nation!

If Sen. Pogemiller sincerely wants jobs, he should ask the businesses that create them what they need. They will tell him loud and clear: “Get off our backs and out of the way, and watch us go to work!”

The DFL has ignored much of what the business community has suggested in creating jobs, mostly for ideological reasons. They haven’t implemented business’s highest priority items in years. It’s time they either started doing those things. If they aren’t willing to start creating a positive business climate, then We The People will replace them with people who will start fixing Minnesota’s economy by getting out of the entrepreneurs’ way.

The DFL’s happy talk about creating jobs with the bonding bill ignores fixing what’s wrong in Minnesota, namely Minnesota’s tax code and the DFL’s habit of spending too much. Infinitely more can be done to putting people back to work by killing the DC Democrats’ health care legislation and by extending the Bush tax cuts than by anything that the DFL can do at the state level.

Those two things are incentivizing entrepreneurs to not invest in growing their businesses and hiring people. Meanwhile, back in Minnesota, the DFL tinkers around the edges in hopes of providing an expensive stopgap measure. If the DFL insists on sending Gov. Pawlenty an oversized bonding bill, which I’m certain they will, then I’m confident that he’ll apply his line-item veto pen. At that point the only question will be whether he line-items out $250,000,000 or $300,000,000 from the bill. (After all, someone’s got to be the adult in St. Paul.)

The DFL won’t fix the underlying economic problems because they think that their system of overtaxation and irresponsible spending works. Businesses are fleeing Minnesota, which should be a warning sign to the DFL. The fact that North Dakota kept spending under control, cut taxes and now has the lowest unemployment in the nation to the point that they’re recruiting workers from Ohio should be warning sign to the DFL, too, but it isn’t.

That’s why, at this point, I think the only thing that will get their attention is a 2 X 4 up topside their heads. If that’s what it takes, then let me be the first to apply the solution because the DFL’s disaster ain’t getting it done.

Technorati: Economy, Unemployment, Speaker Kelliher, Larry Pogemiller, Tax Increases, Bonding Bill, DFL, Tim Pawlenty, Steve Gottwalt, Bush Tax Cuts, Fiscal Restraint, Prosperity, MNGOP