News Cut: March 18, 2009 Archive

Live-blogging Midday: The governor's budget

Posted at 10:58 AM on March 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

MPR's Midday is discussing Gov. Tim Pawlenty's reworked budget plan. I've live-blogging it in search of the salient nuggets.

Guests are Sen. Dick Cohen, DFL-St. Paul, chair of the Senate Finance Committee and Sen. Geoff Michel,, R-Edina, assistant minority leader.

I would anticipate some discussion of Tom Scheck's story that the governor's proposal assumes property tax increases.

11:07 a.m. - "The governor set an appropriate direction," Michel said. "We're starting to see specific proposals and we're starting to digest what the federal money means."

Cohen says Pawlenty uses one-time money and says in the next biennium, "the budget falls off the cliff."

11:10 a.m. - Sen. Michel, asked if one-time money is preferable to a state-wide tax increase, he said a recession is not the right time to raise $2 billion in taxes. "At a minimum we should expect state government should live within its means and set some priorities." That may be a shot against the Pogemiller budget proposal that called for an across-the-board cut.

Cohen says using one-time money for a secure budget "makes no sense." Michel says the DFL is saying "the governor should cut more, but he's cut too much."

11:16 a.m. - Cohen says he's prefer tax increases to the use of one-time money. He says to raises taxes on the wealthiest is preferable "to kicking people who are least able to take care of themselves off the programs they need."

11:19 a.m. - The tax incidence study is being kicked around.

Listener questions

Q: Why are human services the first to be cut?

A: "That's the portion of the budget which is racing away at an unsustainable rate -- 22% was the projected increase over the next two years," Michel said. "This is the PacMan of the state budget."

"If we cut everything in state budget by 5% that's $1.5 billion... you're still short of solving the problem," Cohen said. Pressed on the lack of priorities in the Senate budget, Cohen said "it's a work in progress."

11:25 a.m. - Could K-12 be cut to restore some human service cuts? "There's been a lot of trimming going on in K-12," Sen. Michel said. Cohen says "at the end of the day when we pass K-12 out of the Senate, we'll have a smaller cut than what we show now."

11:39 a.m. - Do business owners have to have $250,000 in profit in order not to be included in an income tax increase for people making more than $250,000

According to MIchel, "92% of small businesses report business income on personal income tax. To lay out this tax increase as just a tax increase on the rich is wrong." Cohen notes businesses can deduct expenses so the number reaching adjusted gross income of $250,000 is much smaller.

11:42 a.m. South Dakota caller cites the number of businesses moving to South Dakota and says "Sen. Cohen is the best politician South Dakota can hope for.

"South Dakota is a state losing population," Cohen said.

11:46 a.m. - Caller says the state's economy has been doing down since the state cut taxes. Proper application of cause-and-effect?

11:49 a.m. - For every wealthy taxpayer the state loses, according to Cohen, "we have to fill that hole with 86 middle-income taxpayer.

11:51 a.m. - "Republican governors throughout the country have attempted to have a mixture of budget cuts and tax increases to deal with budget problems. That's why Minnesota has fallen behind; Governor Pawlenty has refused to look at anything," Cohen said.

11:56 a.m. - Michel asks, "what is reasonable" in the size of the budget?

11:57 a.m. - "Why not just paper over the budget, avoid taxes, under the assumption the economy will get better?" Eichten asks.

"It's a false premise," Cohen says. "You can't have a budget of that sort and not continue to run a significant deficit over the next two years. There is no economic projection to say the economic problems won't continue."

Says Michel" "We've got to deal with the jobs deficit. It's the only thing we should be working on for the next two months.

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AIG's campaign contributions

Posted at 11:31 AM on March 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

Earlier, I provided a link to a few news stories about AIG's campaign contributions, which is getting grilled today by many of the recipients over the millions paid out in bonuses.

According to the watchdog site, OpenSecrets.org, these Minnesota candidates have received campaign contributions by the AIG Group.

2008
Michele Bachmann $250
Norm Coleman $1,000
Elwyn Tinklenberg $750
Al Franken $400

2006
Amy Klobuchar $3,000
Mark Kennedy $1,250

2004
Jim Oberstar $3,000

2002
Norm Coleman $7,333
Paul Wellstone $1,100
Jim Oberstar $1,000

Update 3:23 p.m. From Dave Dziok, communications director for Rep. Michele Bachmann:

If you follow the link below you will see that an analyst for AIG in Houston, Texas, donated to Congresswoman Bachmann's campaign but not to the AIG PAC.

Here's the link for donors to AIG's PAC. Trevor Cox of Houston, TX doesn't appear on there at all.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave.php?sort=A&cmte=C00097725&cycle=2008&Page=1

Here's the link to Trevor Cox's donations which are completely separate and independent from AIG. Simply because he is employed there does not mean he is associated with the PAC that is responsible for political contributions in any way. The names he contributed to, on his own, seem to be all pro-life heavy hitters.

http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/donor_lookup.php?name=Cox,%20Trevor

Congresswoman Bachmann has not ever received donations from AIG. As we told the CRP, the way they report is misleading so I understand how the confusion was made, but the story as reported is misleading so I wanted to draw it your attention.

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Legislature may close loophole on misusing funds

Posted at 2:53 PM on March 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

While Congress was busy sending journalists scurrying to the thesaurus to find words to replace "outrage," a Minnesota House committee was tightening a rather glaring loophole: it's not illegal to misuse taxpayer money (insert the predictable joke here).

According to the Legislature's Session Daily:

Following a rash of recent scandals involving fraud and financial mismanagement at state agencies, Winkler wondered why the state employees involved were being fired but not prosecuted. It turns out that knowingly misappropriating state money is not actually a crime.

Under Rep. Ryan Winkler's bill, anyone who intentionally misuses state funds could be charged with a gross misdemeanor.

The bill was inspired by the case of Sonia Pitt, the former director of homeland security planning for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, who was AWOL when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, who charged over $14,000 in personal travel expenses to the state, and caused the state to pay over $11,000 for her use of cellphones, hotels, airfare, and unnecessary business travel, according to an investigation by the Office of the Legislative Auditor.

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