Gov. Pawlenty is hinting that if the Legislature goes into special session because there's no budget agreement, it would be the fault of Senate DFlers. The governor did an interview with Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition. He said the Senate is taking too long to come up with its budget:

"They've signalled maybe it's an income tax increase, maybe it's gax tax increases, maybe it's beer tax increases. They'll tell us in a couple weeks. Well, in a couple weeks there'll only be a week left in the session, so it's the typical procrastination which leads to kind of the end of the session crunch. And that's unfortunate, but we're still going to try to get it done."

It's certainly true the Senate hasn't come up with a tax plan to pay for the added spending favored by the DFL majority. Senate tax committee chair Sen. Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, is working on a bill, but it seems to be a long way from done. But the half-baked nature of the budget doesn't seem to be a unicameral phenomenon. Witness this item from the Pioneer Press:

St. Paul and Minneapolis would lose $27 million a year in state aid under a tax bill proposed Monday by Rep. Phil Krinkie, R-Shoreview, the chairman of the Tax Committee in the Minnesota House.

Both cities would get legislative permission to impose a new city sales tax — if city voters approved — that would more than replace the lost state aid.

In St. Paul's case, the city would lose about $9 million in state aid, a 17 percent reduction. If voters granted approval for a new half-percent sales tax, the city would realize a $5.3 million net increase over its current state aid.

But some members of the Tax Committee and House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, said they knew nothing about the proposed reduction in state aid until Krinkie released the proposal Monday afternoon in preparation for three days of committee hearings on an omnibus tax bill.

Rep. Krinkie, it should be noted, helped torpedo the House budget bill last week and has also bottled up Gov. Pawlenty's casino plan. It's not like he seems to care much more than Pogemiller about keeping things on track just to meet deadlines. The tax committees may be the most entertaining places for political junkies to watch in the next week or so, as they are led by two of the most idiosyncratic members of the Minnesota Legislature.

One thing the House, Senate and governor appear ready to agree on is an increase in the state minimum wage. The House passed a bill Monday as noted by MPR's Tom Scheck:

The Minnesota House has been the major hurdle for a minimum wage hike for the last eight years. But this year, the measure passed overwhelmingly on an 84-50 vote.

Rep Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, was the chief backer of the increase. He says the hike will help the 49,000 Minnesotans who currently earn the state's minimum wage. He says it will also bump up wages for those who earn slightly more than minimum wage.

"Those are the people are really out there in the trenches doing things we appreciate whether they're changing the bedpans in our nursing homes or changing the linen in the hotels we're staying at our feeding our kids at the schools. Those are the people who will get this increase," he said.

Rukavina's bill would increase the minimum wage differently depending on the size of the employer. Larger employers who do more than $625,000 worth of business a year would have to increase their minimum wage to $6.15 an hour. That's one dollar more than current law.

Some opponents said the increase will cost jobs, and the House and Senate still have to work out their differences. But the governor told Morning Edition he can live with the House bill:

"That's a dollar increase, but it hasn't been increased in over six years, so if you add inflation and the fact that it may not increase for another year or two or more that seems like a reasonable increase to me."

So if (almost) everyone can agree on a minimum wage hike, what will it take for an agreement on the budget? At this point only one thing comes to mind. How about performance enhancing drugs for the Legislature?