Democrats’ Out-of-Touch Budget Targets
by Senator Steve Green
The numbers don’t lie: Minnesota is rapidly heading towards a deficit. Just a few years ago, we had a $19 billion surplus. Democrats spent that away. Now we are facing a $6 billion deficit. And how are Democrats proposing to fix the mess they created? By cutting services to our students, families, and our most vulnerable. Much of their proposed “solutions” involve shifting costs onto counties that can’t afford it.
Senate Republicans have been consistent on this issue: if we want to address the deficit, we need to cut the waste. It’s a simple solution. Yet Democrats refuse to travel down that path.
When we look at the proposed Senate budget targets, they match up pretty closely with Governor Walz’s proposed budget. One thing I find alarming is that Senate Democrats have a “zero” target for the Education budget this biennium, and want to wait to do cuts in the 2028-2029 biennium. To me, that signals that they want to kick the can down the road. I take issue with that. This deficit is something we need to address now. And considering the fact many of our school districts have spent all session begging for relief from the mandates placed on them, now would be the perfect time to make changes. We could easily take this year to make a dent in our deficit and help our schools.
Senate Democrats also want to make cuts in both the Health and Human Services and Human Services areas of our budget. While I agree those are bloated, they seem to be following Governor Walz’s lead in cutting nursing home funding. So we’re talking about eliminating funding for our seniors, rather than address the fraud that has been occurring in both agencies. Those proposed cuts were detailed in the Governor’s budget and amounted to crippling four-year funding decreases for facilities in our area:
- Havenwood Care Center in Bemidji – $2,207,122
- LakeWood Care Center in Baudette – $1,464,757
- Neilson Place in Bemidji – $2,061,982
- Cornerstone Nursing and Rehab in Bagley – $2,298,940
- Good Samaritan Society in Blackduck – $946,282
- Mahnomen Health Center in Mahnomen – $996,423
Our counties cannot afford to pick up any additional costs related to education and nursing home funding cuts. While these “cuts” help the state budget, they hurt our counties because the cost is shifted onto them to maintain. Maybe the metro counties can afford these changes, but many of our outstate counties are financially far worse off. This will cripple them. There’s no doubt about it.
Aside from Education and Human Services, our Environment Committee also doesn’t seem to be on track to make meaningful cuts. Any “cuts” that are being proposed will just result in fees being raised for things like boat registration and state park permits.
We have a little over a month left in Session to get this done, yet we do not have a final conclusion on how to best address the deficit. A solution will involve the House, Senate, and Governor coming together, but that hasn’t happened yet. Democrats seem to think the solution is cutting what the state funds and forcing counties to pick up the bill. That will hurt every student, senior, family, property owner, and taxpayer in this state.