Dear Neighbor,
The House majority has begun a six-week spending spree where, by late May, Democrats are seeking to increase state spending by 40 percent, blow through a $19 billion surplus – and raise taxes along the way.
The first two of a dozen or so omnibus finance bills that will shape the state’s next two-year budget received approval from the House majority this week. They are, comparatively speaking, among the smaller packages, relating to higher education and the Legacy Amendment.
The Democrat plan is beyond unsustainable and is flat-out irresponsible. It is extreme and out of touch with Minnesotans.
Here is the latest from St. Paul:
Higher Education and Legacy finance bills
The Legacy bill totals $821 million, appropriating revenue raised by a three-eighths of one percent additional sales tax that was passed by Minnesota voters in the 2008 Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution. Tax revenue is distributed into four funds as follows: 33 percent to the Clean Water Fund; 33 percent to the Outdoor Heritage Fund; 19.75 percent to the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund; and 14.25 percent to the Parks and Trails Fund.
As for the higher education package, we want to fund higher education in Minnesota, but we need to ensure we’re making the right investments in the right places. This $4.2 billion bill is more of Democrats’ out of control spending. For example, the bill provides a $650 million (18.5%) increase in the next biennium universities across the state are experiencing an average 6-7% drop in enrollment. This can only mean that we are funding systems (administrative bloat), not students. We need to prioritize funding students’ education and keeping them safe, not paying executives.
Paid leave bill
While not officially a budget bill, paid-leave legislation also is making its way through the House which will have significant ramifications across the board. It mandates every employer in the state (public, non-profit, and private) to provide up to 24 weeks of paid leave to every employee and is not consistent with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act re: eligibility, definitions, use of leave, etc., which will create administrative and cost burdens.
This bill is, in effect, a major tax increase on every employer in the state, including private employers, nonprofits, cities, counties, and school districts. It would add costs to child-care providers, mainly center-based care, already facing high regulatory costs which drives up child care rates without adding available revenue to raise child care wages.
The burden of complying with these regulations will rest most heavily on small businesses in our state. As many as 400 new bureaucrats will be hired using an entirely new computer system simply to police this program.
I oppose unworkable one-size-fits-all mandates because of the variety and nuances of the many workplaces across Minnesota. This issue already is being taken care of by most employers that are competing for employees amid a worker shortage.
Employers must have the autonomy to make staffing decisions and provide wages, benefits and schedules that are appropriate for their workplace and responsive to workplace needs. The last thing we need is increased business/consumer costs at a time when we all are dealing with higher prices in today’s economy.
“Democrats Rule the People” bill
Minnesota has a proud and lengthy history of requiring bipartisan support for election law changes. To the contrary, an elections bill (H.F. 3) the House majority approved this week breaks from that tradition by regulating campaign speech, limiting engagement in the political process, and threatening election integrity with automatic voter registration when you sign up for a driver’s license. It seems designed to reach into our free marketplace of ideas protected by the First Amendment to empower certain voices and silence others.
That’s why I call it the “Democrats Rule the People Act.”
There are some real concerns throughout this bill but, for today, I want to focus on an ill-advised provision that targets what the bill calls “foreign influenced corporations.” This sounds good on the surface because, of course, we all want to make sure Minnesota elections are decided by Minnesotans. As they say, the devil is in the details.
First, this provision ironically is itself – by its own terms – foreign-influenced legislation. This is actually model legislation that's being promoted by the Center for American Progress, which is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit funded by foreign governments and foreign individuals.
Furthermore, the way that the bill defines foreign influenced corporations is totally unworkable and unrealistic. It's very clear this is designed to circumvent Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment. This proposal essentially silences all publicly traded corporations and a lot of other corporations in a way that will appear to the federal courts as just an attempt to use smoke and mirrors to dodge Supreme Court precedent and controlling precedent protecting First Amendment Rights.
Another concerning problem with this part of the bill is that it picks and chooses which speakers are going to be excluded from the marketplace specifically by carving out unions and carving out nonprofit corporations from its from its definition of foreign influence.
A union could have the same amount of foreign influence or a nonprofit corporation and can have the same amount of foreign influence as a for profit corporation. But, under the Democrats' bill, the nonprofits and the unions are allowed to engage in speech in Minnesota elections and the for profit corporations are not. I offered common-sense amendments on the floor to fix these problems, but the DFL majority shot them down.
The upshot is this our government would take over the marketplace of ideas and to do it in a way that seems to be designed to benefit their allies and to punish their enemies. That's the wrong approach from a constitutional perspective and it’s also something that's very likely to be challenged in the courts, struck down, and once again put Minnesota taxpayers on the hook for completely unnecessary legal fees.
Look for more as we make our way through this initial round of finance bills and, until next time, have a good weekend.
Sincerely,
Harry