Archive for the ‘Election 2010’ Category

John Feehery’s op-ed talks about 2018 in a way I hadn’t seen prior to tonight. Feehery opens his op-ed by saying “Money, message and ultimately the map, in equal measures. That’s what wins political campaigns.” I couldn’t agree more.

Back in 2011, I wrote lots of articles about redistricting. The effects of redistricting didn’t highlight themselves in 2012 because that was a presidential election. In 2014, they showed up when Republicans flipped the House. This year, redistricting is likely to kill the national Democrats’ wave. The GOP landslide of 2010 wasn’t just about winning 63 net seats in the US House. It went well beyond that. When I wrote this post, I wrote about watching the Journal Editorial Report. During the show, they said “Republicans gained 680 state legislative seats in last Tuesday’s elections.
According to their map, Republicans control both houses of their state legislatures in 25 states. Here’s the list of states where Republicans control both houses of the legislature: Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Michigan, Indiana, Alabama, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Maine, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina and New Hampshire.”

That meant Republicans had full control of the redistricting process. That, in turn, meant that they could strengthen the marginal districts that they just won. Fast forward to Feehery’s op-ed, in which he said this:

Finally, there is the map. Republicans have a distinct national advantage going into this election. As Mother Jones reported in March, “A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice calculates just how much of a landslide Democrats will need in order to win in districts that were drawn specifically to withstand Democratic waves and elect Republicans. The result, report co-author Michael Li says, should be a ‘reality check’ for Democrats.” To win the House, the Democrats would have to win the popular vote by 11 points, according to this left-leaning organization.

Is that possible? Yes. Probably? No.

Let me rephrase that in my own way. Is that possible? No. Is that possible? Not a snowball’s prayer in hell.

Prior to this op-ed, I thought that the Democrats most prone to delusion lived in fever swamps with Keith Ellison, Nancy Pelosi and Babs Boxer as neighbors. Thanks to Stan Greenberg’s op-ed, I have to consider the possibility that the entire Democratic Party is nuts.

Greenberg’s op-ed starts by saying “President Obama will be remembered as a thoughtful and dignified president who led a scrupulously honest administration that achieved major changes.” I’d use lots of terms to describe the Obama administration but scrupulously honest isn’t one of them. Fast and Furious was the personification of dishonesty. Weaponizing the IRS to harass TEA Party organizations isn’t the picture of scrupulously honest, either. Unanimously getting shot down 13 straight times by the Supreme Court for his attempts at executive supremacy doesn’t say scrupulously honest. It says President Obama didn’t respect the rule of law.

Later, Greenberg said that President Obama “rescued an economy in crisis and passed the recovery program, pulled America back from its military overreach, passed the Affordable Care Act and committed the nation to addressing climate change.”

First, President Obama didn’t rescue “an economy in crisis.” TARP, passed during President Bush’s term, started the stabilization. The Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing, not President Obama’s stimulus, injected life into the economy. Pulling “America back from its military overreach” created ISIS, which is expanding its lethality each day.

The American people aren’t stupid. They tried telling President Obama that they didn’t want Obamacare. He didn’t care. Ideology demanded that it be passed so the Democrats lied about it, then passed it. The next election, the American people threw a beat-down on the Democrats’ agenda. Still, President Obama wouldn’t listen. Eventually, he said he’d get things done with a pen and a phone.

President Obama’s outright disrespect for the Constitution and the rule of law got people upset with Democrats. That’s why they’re on the outside looking in. Half of the states have a Republican governor and Republican legislatures. In DC, there’s a Republican waiting to be sworn in as the next president and Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

That type of repudiation doesn’t happen to “thoughtful and dignified presidents.” It happens to despots who ignore the Constitution and the American people. That’s President Obama’s identity.

Technorati: Barack Obama, Fever Swamps, Keith Ellison, Nancy Pelosi, Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Moderates, Stan Greenberg, Pen and a Phone, Weaponized Government, Lois Lerner, Corruption, Shellacking, Democrats

This article highlights how Democrats deny what’s happened the last few election cycles. Hidden in James Oliphant’s article is the sentence that “Republicans also command 32 state legislatures and have full control — meaning they hold the governor’s office and both legislative chambers — in 24 states, including swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. When President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, they controlled just nine.”

After that, we’re told that “Party insiders are reluctant to blame the popular Obama but cite plenty of reasons for the decline. These include a muddled economic message; an overemphasis on emerging demographic groups such as minorities and millennial at the expense of white voters; a perception the party is elitist and aligned with Wall Street; a reluctance to embrace the progressive populism of Senator Bernie Sanders, the former presidential hopeful; and failure to field strong candidates in key states.”

Embracing “the progressive populism of Sen. Bernie Sanders” isn’t a path back to the majority. It’s a path to oblivion. This paragraph is delusional, too:

As a result, a poor performance by the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections gave Republicans control of statehouses across the country, allowing them to redraw legislative maps to fashion districts that would help ensure their long-term electoral success.

Democrats didn’t lose 63 seats in the House in 2010 because their candidates performed poorly. They lost because they voted for the ACA. What happened in 2010 actually started in 2009. Democrats didn’t listen to their constituents. They listened to President Obama instead. Democrats didn’t listen to their constituents when they held their townhall meetings in August, 2009. It didn’t require a rocket scientist to notice that people were upset during their meetings.

The people spoke. The politicians ignored the people. In November, 2010, the people spoke again. This time, they spoke with a loud, disapproving voice. They essentially told Democrats that they were getting punished because Democrats didn’t listen to We The People. Now in 2016, the people were heard again. They said that they don’t care about income inequality as much as they care about businesses creating good-paying middle class jobs. The people said they don’t care about transgender bathrooms in schools as much as they care about students getting a great education in school. We The People said that the EPA has gone too far and that it’s time to stop the EPA’s abusive behavior.

From a structural standpoint, it’s wise to re-implement Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. That won’t put Democrats back in control, though. That’s because Democrats have a huge millstone hanging around their neck. The name on that millstone is Obamacare. If Democrats don’t admit that Obamacare was a mistake to implement, they’ll wander through the desert for a long time.

Technorati: Bernie Sanders, Obamacare, Townhall Meetings, Nancy Pelosi, Astroturf, Democrats, Middle Class, TEA Party, Election 2010, Election 2016

Juan Williams’ column is filled with faulty premises. Here’s the first of Williams’ faulty premises:

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) strategy for defeating Democrats in the final two years of the Obama administration is clear: divide and conquer.

There’s no doubt that Democrats are divided over Keystone. What Williams didn’t detect is that the people are incredibly united on the issue. Almost 70% of registered voters support building the Keystone XL Pipeline. A pathetic 25% of registered voters oppose building it.

If Democrats want to listen to the environmental activist wing of the Democratic Party, that’s their right. If Democrats want to ignore the will of the American people, that’s their option, too. Just don’t try telling me that that’s divide and conquer. That’s giving people the option between doing the right thing and playing partisan politics.

Now he is testing Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) ability as minority leader to hold Senate Democrats together in opposition to a Republican agenda favoring the pipeline, halting immigration reform, lowering corporate taxes, and seeking to destroy Obamacare.

If significant numbers of Senate Democrats are willing to join with Republicans to force presidential vetoes, McConnell wins. He gains the power to paint himself as the good guy working across political lines. And he will smear the remaining Democrats as members of an out-of-the-mainstream party in the grips of leftist ideologues — Obama, Reid, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and possibly Hillary Clinton.

Sen. McConnell’s agenda this year consists of passing lots of things that 70+ percent of the American people support. Pundits call that picking off the low-hanging fruit. It’s the stuff that President Obama and Sen. Reid ignored the past 4 years.

It isn’t surprising that Republicans have a different agenda than President Obama and Sen. Reid. President Obama and Sen. Reid frequently thwarted the will of the American people. They weren’t just characterized as out-of-the-mainstream ideologues. It’s that President Obama and Sen. Reid have been out-of-the-mainstream ideologues.

In 2010, the American people spoke with a clear voice that they didn’t like President Obama’s and Sen. Reid’s agenda. This past November, they spoke with an even clearer voice. They rejected President Obama’s and Sen. Reid’s agenda.

Rather than listen to the American people, President Obama said that he isn’t interested in the American people’s agenda. President Obama and the Democrats have forcefully said that they’re interested only in their agenda.

Hooray for Sen. McConnell for putting the Democrats’ feet to the fire. It’s time to find out if they’re aligning with the American people or with the Democrats’ special interest allies.

Technorati: President Obama, Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Environmental Activists, Special Interests, Democrats, Mitch McConnell, Keystone XL Pipeline, Republicans

There’s no question that Gov. Dayton is a progressive. In 2010, he campaigned on the issue that Minnesota’s tax code wasn’t progressive enough. Immediately upon getting sworn in, he submitted a budget that raised income taxes. During the campaign, Gov. Dayton criticized Tom Horner’s cigarette tax for its regressivity. In 2013, Gov. Dayton signed a plethora of regressive taxes. This year, he’s pushing hard for another regressive tax increase that will hit the poor and the middle class harder than it’ll hit “the rich.”

When Republicans said no to raising taxes on the poor and the middle class, Gov. Dayton threw another temper tantrum:

Mark Drake, the new president of the Minnesota Jobs Coalition, noticed Gov. Dayton’s change of mind in this op-ed:

During a recent press conference in which he reiterated his support for a gasoline tax increase, Dayton mocked a GOP transportation proposal as “pure fantasy,” dismissing the plan’s funding mechanism as derived from “la la land” and “Fantasy Island.” Yet Dayton’s name-calling can’t change the fact that he’s long been an opponent of the very type of gas tax increase that he’s now pushing.

“I don’t support a gas tax increase at this time, because I think there’s not public support for it,” Dayton said in 2012. Dayton added that he opposed such a hike because “I don’t see it as providing nearly the amount of money necessary to make significant and really identifiable progress.”

“I don’t support a gas tax. I don’t think the people of Minnesota are prepared to support it and that’s the critical consideration,” Dayton assured Minnesotans in 2013. “If it’s going to raise more revenues than the current gas tax, then it’s going to result in higher fuel prices for middle-income Minnesotans. I think they’re not in a position economically to have that,” Dayton emphasized that same year. During his 2014 re-election campaign, Dayton again expressed opposition to a gas tax increase. “I have thought all along that this requires a long discussion in a non-election year,” Dayton stated.

It’s time for Gov. Dayton to stop with his flip-flopping. Gov. Dayton and the DFL didn’t promise to raise taxes during the campaign. In fact, they tried claiming that repealing their tax increase from 2013 was a tax cut. Gov. Dayton and the DFL promised voters property tax relief.

I wrote this post and this post to show that the DFL failed with that promise.

There’s no question that Gov. Dayton and the DFL prefer a progressive income tax system. Likewise, there’s no doubt that Gov. Dayton and the DFL like raising regressive taxes, too. Their record is littered with proof of the DFL voting for progressive and regressive taxes.

Tax the rich is the DFL’s mantra but tax everyone is what the DFL believes in. The DFL just isn’t honest enough to admit the latter in public.

Technorati: Mark Dayton, Tax Increases, Tax the Rich, Gas Tax, La La Land, DFL, Mark Drake, Minnesota Jobs Coalition

It didn’t take long for the DFL to define themselves on transportation:

Then there’s Gov. Dayton’s fallback position on everything:

“I say $6 billion and they say nothing?” a frustrated Dayton said last week during the press conference at which he made his “pure fantasy” remark about Republicans’ proposal. “This is not a beginning of a sensible conversation.”

Tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. That’s the DFL’s solution for everything. In 2013, they raised taxes and fees by $2,400,000,000. In 2014, they repealed some of the taxes they’d raised in 2013, then had the audacity to call it a tax cut. FYI- That didn’t fly with voters. They returned Republicans to the majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives.

With the 2015 session just a week old, the Senate DFL has proposed raising taxes to fund their transportation wish list. Let’s be clear about this. Republicans want to focus on fixing roads and bridges. The DFL wants to raises a plethora of taxes to repair roads and bridges, pay for trolley cars, fund transit expansion and pay for light rail projects.

Republicans a) don’t want to raise taxes and b) want to focus on roads and bridges. The DFL wants to raise the gas tax (even though it won’t fund the projects they’re proposing) to fix roads and bridges and increase license tabs and the metro sales tax to pay for transit projects.

In 2010, Mark Dayton criticized Tom Horner for pushing a cigarette tax increase, calling it a regressive tax. At the time, Gov. Dayton said Minnesota needed a more progressive tax system. Back then, Gov. Dayton said that he’d “tax the rich” but he’d cut taxes for the middle class.

There’s now a plethora of proof that Gov. Dayton lied. BIGTIME. The rich got hit alright. Unfortunately for the middle class and the working poor, they’ve gotten hit the hardest with the Dayton-DFL tax and fee increases.

Minnesota’s middle class and working poor can’t afford the DFL’s tax increases. They’re taxed too much already.

Technorati: Mark Dayton, Scott Dibble, Tax Increases, Gas Tax, License Fees, Light Rail, Transportation, DFL

Dylan Scott’s article about what might happen if the Supreme Court invalidates health insurance subsidies being paid to people who bought insurance through HealthCare.gov is fascinating. For instance:

What leeway does the ACA itself give the administration? It seems self-evident that the states currently using the federal exchange would be required to do something, to “establish” their own exchanges, and the Health and Human Services Department therefore couldn’t just decree that all exchanges are state-based. States also probably need to do more than, say, sign a piece of paper declaring their exchange state-based.

“Now you could perhaps define the word ‘established’ down. HHS might be tempted to do so,” Bagley said. “But at the minimum, that kind of move from the administration would be sure to provoke a prompt legal response.”

There’s an additional problem not cited in the article. Specifically, state-established exchanges are part of Section 1311:

(d) Requirements
(1) In general
An Exchange shall be a governmental agency or nonprofit entity that is established by a State.

Changing that language requires legislation, which Mitch McConnell might agree to in exchange for other concessions:

That also extends to Congress, which as Bagley and Jones both noted, could correct the problem with ease by amending the law to allow tax credits on the federal exchanges. “Congress could fix this with a stroke of the pen,” Bagley said. “I could write the statute in a single sentence.”

But nobody is really expecting that. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this month that SCOTUS could “take down” Obamacare in the King case and that would open up the opportunity for “a major do-over.”

“If that were to be the case, I would assume that you could have a mulligan here, a major do-over of the whole thing,” he said, in comments flagged by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent.

While the administration might be willing to do a lot to save the law, an emboldened Republican Congress seems unlikely to settle for anything less than major concessions, as McConnell suggests. So a fix in Washington doesn’t appear in the cards.

It’s interesting that Democrats fear a Washington fix because that would require them making major concessions in exchange for those subsidies. In other words, DC Democrats are most afraid of actually improving the ACA.

That’s insane on a multitude of fronts, starting with the fact that the ACA is a weighty millstone around their political necks. Democrats got crushed in 2010 and 2014 because of the ACA. Despite experiencing those historical thumpings, Democrats don’t want to change the ACA. It’s their right to commit political suicide.

If there’s anything that can be gleaned from Juan Williams’ article, it’s that he’s exceptionally gullible. Here’s what I’m talking about:

Last week, however, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) invited me and a few other columnists to his office to deliver a message: The paralyzed, polarized government is not due to the president’s failure to win friends in Congress. Nor is it because Reid is a “dictator.” In his view, the stalled Senate is the result of an intentional strategy pursued by the Republicans.

Reid pointed to constant filibusters by the GOP minority. Republicans also refuse to allow the use of unanimous consent to move along Senate business, he charged.

Reid asserted that after President Obama was first elected, the GOP met with Frank Luntz, the political adviser, who told them to block everything Obama and Democrats tried to accomplish and then tell voters that Obama was a failure and government could not get anything done.

First, let’s address the issue of whether Reid is a dictator. There’s no question that he is. Since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, Sen. Reid hasn’t brought a single bill passed by the House of Representatives come up for a vote in the Senate. Many of the bills sitting on Sen. Reid’s desk got overwhelming support, some getting more than 350 votes in the House.

There’s no justification for Sen. Reid’s actions.

Second, Sen. Reid’s legislative tactics are best described as my-way-or-the-highway. Republicans rarely get to offer their amendments. When they do, which is rare, they’re shot down on a party line vote.

That sounds rather dictatorial, doesn’t it?

Next, let’s tackle the part about Republicans blocking everything President Obama proposed. In 2009-2010, Democrats had a filibuster-proof Senate for well over a year. They didn’t have the ability to block anything President Obama proposed. Further, there’s overwhelming proof that Democrats ignored the people’s will. That overwhelming proof comes in the form of the worst “shellacking” in recent midterm election history. It isn’t just that Republicans won 63 seats in the House. It’s that they flipped 680 seats in state legislatures, too, which helped them flip 19 legislative majorities and 5 governorships.

Wave elections are rare enough. Wave elections of that magnitude don’t happen much more than once a century. They only happen when the people get utterly pissed with DC. That’s what happened in 2010. Democrats ignored the people on health care reform. People were reading the bills, then reciting them to Democrat politicians at August townhall meetings. Many of those who spoke out had never taken the political process seriously. Many of those who spoke out were women.

Harry Reid didn’t care what they said. He passed the ACA, aka Obamacare, anyway.

Most of the people who spoke out for the first time in their lives didn’t know Frank Luntz. They didn’t listen to Republicans. They attended TEA Party rallies that were filled with like-minded people who simply wanted politicians to pay attention to them. Many of the TEA Party activists that were created were upset with Republicans, too, though not nearly as upset as they were with Democrats.

Finally, people don’t need Republicans telling them that HealthCare.gov failed. They didn’t need Republicans telling them that the IRS was attacking the organizations that simply wanted their voices heard. They didn’t need Republicans telling them that the VA crisis was proof that the federal government is inept.

Reid’s frustration led him to announce last week that he is considering a vote to change Senate rules and break the power of the GOP filibuster. After the midterm elections, he wants to expand on the so-called ‘Nuclear Option,’ approved by the Senate last year. Under that rule, only 50 votes are required to confirm most judicial nominees. Reid is considering applying the same standard to bills.

Reid isn’t frustrated. He’s pissed that Republicans haven’t rolled over to President Obama’s demands. Further, the question must be asked how President Obama’s policies have worked. Thus far, President Obama’s policies have failed, whether we’re talking about the economy, the ACA, foreign policy or national security.

Finally, let’s look at the destructive role President Obama plays in this mess. Let’s remember him inviting Republicans to the White House for their ideas on the Stimulus bill. When Eric Cantor made some suggestions, President Obama brushed them aside, saying that “We won.” The tone was set. Harry Reid’s marching orders became clear at that point. His job was to shove as many things down Republicans’ throats as possible.

Now Sen. Reid is peddling the BS that all he wants to do is legislate. That isn’t credible coming from the man who’s repeatedly called the Koch brothers un-American, who’s lied on the Senate Floor that he has word that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid taxes in over a decade and who’s been President Obama’s protector since 2011.

The Senate will be a far better place the minute Harry Reid is run out of office. He’s a despicable low-life who isn’t capable of doing what’s right for the nation. He’s only capable of doing what he’s told to do by the worst president in the last 75 years.

Technorati: Harry Reid, Nuclear Option, President Obama, HealthCare.gov, VA Scandal, IRS Scandal, Obstructionist, Democrats, TEA Party Activists, Grass Roots, Election 2010

This op-ed calls out the DFL, starting with Gov. Dayton, Sen. Bakk and Speaker Thissen, for telling whoppers about repaying the school shift. Dan Fabian’s and Deb Kiel’s op-ed is a shot across Gov. Dayton’s bow:

So, when Gov. Mark Dayton and Democratic leaders recently declared their one-party control led to the state making good on $2.5 billion in delayed K-12 school payments, we stopped dead in our tracks, totally astonished.

Now, people who know us gather we are reasonable people. We don’t like to get into partisan politics, but in this instance, we felt the need to set the record straight to what we view as one of the more egregious examples of political misrepresentation.

Rep. Fabian and Rep. Kiel won’t say it this harshly but I will. Gov. Dayton, Sen. Bakk and Speaker Thissen lied through their teeth. (I first wrote about this in this post.) Here’s what the DFL press release admitted:

Governor Mark Dayton, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, House Speaker Paul Thissen, Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter, and Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius announced that Minnesota schools were repaid an additional $636 million at the end of the 2013 fiscal year.

The budget that was in place through the end of FY2013 was passed by the GOP legislature after a lengthy shutdown caused by Gov. Dayton. Credit for paying off $636,000,000 of the school shift rightly belongs to the GOP legislature, first because their budget created a healthy surplus and secondly, because the GOP legislature said no to the greedy fingers of the DFL’s special interests.

Here’s some verifiable facts for Gov. Dayton, Speaker Thissen and Sen. Bakk to digest:

From the previous Legislature, we inherited a $5 billion deficit, including a $2 billion school shift. A “shift” simply means that payments to K-12 schools are delayed to a later date in order to provide a one-time savings to the state without actually reducing education appropriations.

As we wrestled to balance a historic deficit and out-of-control spending, we and our legislative colleagues called for holding the line on taxes and controlling state spending; on the other hand, Dayton called for large tax increases to fix the deficit.

During compromise negotiations, Dayton was first to float the idea of delaying school payments to an even later date. Ultimately, as part of the 2011 budget agreement with the governor, the amount owed in deferred payments to schools grew to $2.7 billion.

In other words, the DFL had little, if anything, to do with accelerating the paying off of the school shift. Rep. Thissen didn’t vote for the budget Gov. Dayton grudgingly signed. Sen. Bakk didn’t vote for the budget that Gov. Dayton grudgingly signed, either.

It’s pretty pathetic to see 3 people attempting to take credit for something they shut down the government to prevent. That’s the sad truth of this episode. Here’s what the Democrats said about the GOP budget:

Hardworking Minnesotans responded well to the budget that didn’t tax them, and revenues coming in to the state were consistently higher than expected. Record numbers of businesses popped up, and the unemployment rate continued to drop.

In April 2012, Dayton vetoed the Legislature’s move to pay back more than $2 billion in delayed K-12 payments. With this veto, Dayton said, “This is what I think is right for Minnesota.”

Vetoing a bill that would’ve paid off the vast majority of the school shift, then taking credit for paying off the school shift with the money from a budget they didn’t want belongs in the theater of the absurd. It’s pathetically fitting that Democrats would take credit for something they didn’t want anything to do with.

By this point, the 2011 fiscally responsible budget had produced nearly $3.4 billion in cumulative budget surpluses. Of this, about $2.5 billion has been applied to the school shift, leaving only about $238 million from the 2010 DFL-led Legislature.

During the 2013 session, our DFL colleagues enacted a special provision that allowed them to use the remaining budget surplus of $636 million and put it toward the remaining school shift.

Now, Gov. Dayton and legislative leaders who decried the 2011 budget are taking credit for its benefits. We have to admit, it’s a shrewd move and politically savvy. But it’s not honest.

The words honesty and Democrats fit together as nicely as ‘government shutdown’ and ‘respectful of veterans’.

Gov. Dayton and the Democratic legislature fought against paying off the school shift. Democratic legislators voted in lockstep against the GOP to repay the shift. Gov. Dayton vetoed the bill that would’ve paid off $2,500,000,000 of the school shift. Those are verifiable, irrefutable facts.

Gov. Dayton and the Democratic legislature should be ashamed of lying this blatantly about who paid off the school shift.

UPDATE: Sen. Nienow just emailed me this clip from this September’s special session. In the video, Sen. Bakk admits that the school shift wasn’t in the DFL’s budget. Further, Sen. Bakk made clear that paying off the final $238,000,000 would rely on whether sufficient revenues came in. Finally, Sen. Bakk sounded anything but clear on whether there was enough money to repeal the DFL’s mistake taxes, aka the B2B sales taxes on farm equipment repairs, telecommunications purchases and the warehousing services sales tax.

Technorati: K-12 Education, School Shift, Mark Dayton, Paul Thissen, Tom Bakk, DFL, Dan Fabian, Deb Kiel, School Shift Repayment, Rainy Day Fund, MNGOP

Sunday morning, I DVR’ed At Issue With Tom Hauser for the first time since the election. I’m glad I did, though not because I agreed with what I heard. The majority of the show was Hauser’s interview of Gov. Dayton on his budget.

The dishonest things that Gov. Dayton said were insulting to thinking people. About 6 minutes into the show, Gov. Dayton said that “The GOP wouldn’t tell me what spending I should cut.”

First, I highlighted here how Gov. Dayton is cutting spending by $225,000,000 but raising taxes by $3,700,000,000. It’s apparent that Gov. Dayton isn’t interested in cutting spending. Neither is the DFL legislature. They can’t afford it because they’ve got too many political allies to repay with taxpayers’ money.

Next, it’s insulting that Gov. Dayton would lie like that. The GOP legislature passed a budget complete with spending cuts and spending priorities. Gov. Dayton and the DFL didn’t like that budget, which led to Gov. Dayton’s veto of the legislature’s budget.

If Gov. Dayton said that he disagreed with the GOP budget, everyone who paid attention to the budget fight would agree. Saying that Republicans didn’t offer specific cuts in their omnibus bills is exceptionally dishonest.

Unfortunately, Gov. Dayton telling whoppers isn’t surprising. It’s disappointing but it isn’t surprising.

Later in the interview, Hauser asked Gov. Dayton how he’d reconcile his sales tax and cigarette tax proposals with what he said on the campaign trail in 2010. Here’s what Gov. Dayton said:

GOV. DAYTON: Well, if my tax proposal in 2011, which was no tax increase for sales or property or individuals, which would’ve raised taxes on the wealthiest 2% by 2 points, if that would’ve been adopted, we would have no deficit going into the next biennium. We would be able to pay off the school shift entirely.

That’s nonsense. First, Gov. Dayton’s initial tax increase proposal called for creating a top tax bracket of 10.95%, compared with the top tax bracket today of 7.85%. Next, Gov. Dayton’s initial tax increase proposal included a 3% surcharge on income over $1,000,000 a year.

Most importantly, Gov. Dayton didn’t explain why raising the sales and cigarette taxes were taxes against workers in 2010 but it’s ok to raise them now.

The truth is that Gov. Dayton, like DFL legislators, loves all tax increases. He just loves confiscatory income tax increases on “the rich” most of all.

Finally, the GOP legislature passed a bill that would’ve paid off the school shift last year. Gov. Dayton vetoed it. This year, Dr. Cassellius, his Education commissioner, admitted in testimony that Gov. Dayton’s education budget wouldn’t pay off the school shift until 2017.

I repeat. Gov. Dayton will raise the income tax and the cigarette tax while applying the sales tax to dozens of things it doesn’t apply to now but he won’t pay off the school shift until 2017. That’s several political lifetimes from now.

That’s why Gov. Dayton’s policies are totally unacceptable for Main Street Minnesota.

Tags: Mark Dayton, Tax Increases, Budget, Deficits, School Shift, Tax The Rich, Sales Tax, Cigarette Tax, DFL