During the past week or so, action has begun to take place on the conference committee reports for major spending bills. I felt that it was important to provide an explanation as to why I, along with my colleagues in the Minnesota Senate, have cast a number of ‘no’ votes on these spending proposals. The most serious concern at this time is that lawmakers outside the DFL core leadership, even many of their conference committee chairs, have no ‘big picture’ of what the overall plan is for revenue and spending. Without spending targets, each individual bill is a spending island and lawmakers supporting them are making wildly irresponsible assumptions that the budget will work out magically in the end. These budget-setting tools were due to Senators in April and would help all lawmakers establish a framework for the budget in its entirety. Most of the DFL budget bills are just too big and fail to set reasonable priorities. Consider the recent veto of the $10 billion Health and Human Services bill, which has future increases that will push it up to around one-third of total state spending. It’s simply not manageable. The rejected State Government Finance bill is at about $550 million. It increases the budget of the legislature alone by almost 20 percent over two years. All of this has happened in the absence of a budget target for E-12 Education spending, the largest item in the state’s budget. I understand any frustration that may be stemming from the number of ‘no’ votes that have been cast by members of the Senate body. However, the lack of transparency in the budget process during the 2007 Session should also be cause for frustration. It is not fair to members of the Senate, and more importantly it is not fair to Minnesotans, to continue on the same track we have been on. Sen. Michelle Fischbach is serving in her fifth term in the Minnesota Senate. She encourages and appreciates constituent input and can be reached at (651) 296-2084, by mail to 153 State Office Building/St. Paul, MN 55155 or via e-mail at sen.michelle.fischbach@senate.mn.
