Two years, two very different legislative sessions. Both however, orchestrated under the same Democrat one-party control in Minnesota.
In January 2023 the legislature started seeing large, controversial bills arriving on the House floor. The extremist abortion-to-birth was introduced as the Democrats’ top legislative priority. In February, we debated the blackout bill (aka carbon free energy). In March, Democrats prioritized making Minnesota a sanctuary state for transgenders, allowing our state to pay for children to transition and going as far as removing parental rights. We debated this bill for hours, to no avail.
By year’s end , House and Senate Democrats and Governor Walz agreed to spend a nearly $18 billion budget surplus, raise taxes by $10 billion, and grow state government by 40%. They also agreed to new laws that allow abortion until birth, punish law-abiding gun owners, and give free college, health insurance and drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants.
Many were shocked last year by the large number of awful new laws that raised taxes, spent money, or created controversial policy. The Democrats showed they had the capability of passing large controversial bills and doing it month after month.
The 2024 session ended in mass chaos. This was due to a significant logjam of more controversial bills seeking passage. Any serious person could understand that these bills could not be debated based on the time left on the clock.
On May 19, with less than an hour to go before the 2024 legislative session was mandated to adjourn, numerous omnibus spending proposals were unfinished. This was due to the complete mismanagement of the session agenda by Democrats, who waited until the last day to try and approve their preferred partisan legislation before tackling their budget bills.
The bills on our calendar included stopping schools and governments from removing gay and lesbian rainbow pride symbols (ultimately did not receive a floor hearing); ranked choice voting for local governments (received bipartisan opposition and was defeated on the House floor); a Constitutional Amendment that would codify abortions in Minnesota all the way until the baby’s birth (approved in the House by 1 vote, not debated by the Senate); and more.
Because Democrat leadership was unable to control the radical activists in their own caucus who pushed these controversial bills, legislation that actually impacted state government were left until the final weekend of session.
All of Saturday was lost. The Minnesota Senate recessed all day as the majority tried to strike a deal on the Uber/Lyft situation, a problem that came about due to the actions of the radical leftists sitting on the Minneapolis City Council. So as the left was negotiating with the far left, regular legislative business took a back seat.
All of this led to chaos in both chambers as the legislative clock was winding down Sunday night. As the Democrats were unable to pass their budget bills, during the final hour they combined all of them into one mammoth extortion bill. It was more than 1,431 pages in length, yet not available to read online or on paper. We were literally told the bill contains provisions relating to taxes, transportation, housing, labor, higher education, agriculture, energy, human services, scope of practice and a binary trigger ban for firearms.
Despite Republican objections, we were ordered to vote. Like Nancy Pelosi once said, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
As I write this, I still don’t know all of what’s in it. It’s 1,431 pages!
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the deciding vote as to whether this monstrosity was sent to the governor was made by a Democrat senator who is charged with burglary.
To me, it’s par for the course. Democrats had two years to pass anything they wanted under one-party rule. Yet they’ll point the finger at anyone but themselves for their dereliction of duty – and have no shame doing it.
It’s been nothing but displays of radical, out-of-touch Democrat extremism for the past two years. How could anyone be surprised that they gave us one more for the road?