Dear Neighbor,
The 2025 session started with nearly one month of House Democrats staying home and collecting a paycheck.
Then came a month of House Republicans enjoying a one-seat majority.
Now, the House is about to enter a third phase of this session, with a 67-67 tie.
It begs the question: What is the rest of the session going to look like? Best I can tell is there are two paths we can take.
One path is the Blue Dog Democrats, as they declare themselves in the Senate, are sincere, and we are actually going to work across party lines in order to do sensible things that Minnesotans want. And we are going to find a coalition of the sane between the two caucuses in the House to address policy in a serious nature that's not unduly influenced by the extremes.
It’s either that, or we're just going to retreat to our corners of the arena, be completely inflexible and partisan, and run out the clock on the regular session. Then, a special session can take place after Gov. Walz and the legislative caucus leaders decide the state’s budget and policy positions for the next two years.
Those really are the choices, and which of those paths we take depends pretty much entirely on the membership of the legislative caucuses.
I'm having great conversations with Democrats about policy where we could potentially come to a bipartisan agreement about things that are going to be beneficial to the vast majority of Minnesotans. It can happen. In fact, it did happen this week when the House approved a whistleblower protection bill 133-0.
The difficulty that I run into – on both sides of the aisle – is people being unwilling to let the other side have a win. What’s more important, political wins or enacting policy that best serves Minnesotans?
Policy issues are one thing, but the legislature’s top responsibility this session is to set a new two-year state budget. With a $6 billion shortfall on the horizon we have tough decisions to make. This means setting priorities just like every mom and dad sitting at a kitchen table has had to do over the course of the past several years. Which of these things would we like to do? Which of these things can we actually do?
We’re clearly not headed toward a situation where everybody’s going to be happy with the budget outcome. It’s too bad that instead of managing the state’s $18 billion surplus responsibly and sustainably, Democrats made a bunch of promises they couldn't keep.
Now, as we deal with this impending deficit, Democrats already have pivoted toward blaming Trump, Elon and House Republicans for their own inability to honor their word. In reality, the Democrats never were going to be able to keep their promises. We had a projected shortfall of $5 billion and growing back in November, long before Elon, Trump or a House Republican majority even took office.
As I’ve previously noted, Democrats would rather talk about Donald J. Trump at every turn rather than discuss their own disastrous fiscal record.
Further tax increases to address our projected shortfall should be off the table because it is like squeezing blood from the proverbial turnip. The idea that you can simply raise taxes on an economy that you've strangled and get more revenue is obviously incorrect. If that worked, we wouldn’t be looking at a deficit after the unchecked Democrats raised taxes by $10 billion last year despite having an $18 billion surplus.
We’ll see if Democrats have the wherewithal to acknowledge they caused a spending problem in our state so we can get a budget in place and adjourn on time. It may only take one of them to have the courage to do what’s right for Minnesotans.
Sincerely,
Walter