News Cut: June 8, 2011 Archive

Carpe per diem (5x8 - 6/8/11)

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Five by 8

1) CASH AND THE MINNESOTA LEGISLATOR

"GOP leaders move to trim lawmakers' expense payments," the headline on an MPR story said when the Legislature began its work in January. How did that leading-by-example thing work out? Not so well, MPR's Tom Scheck reports today. The move in the Senate was supposed to cut $100,000 out of the budget; it saved $50,000 over 2009. That was more than offset by the increase in per diem payments in the House, Scheck reports.

Taking the maximum amount of per diem -- about $12,000 -- was a bipartisan effort.

Sen. Mike Parry said he would be willing to take less per diem if he were paid more. One legislator who took no per diem said the private sector doesn't pay people this way, so neither should the government.

In 2009, the Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to per diem payments when it ruled an increase in per diem payments is not an unconstitutional salary increase. The last time the Senate voted to increase per diem, the vote wasn't close.

More politics: Tim Pawlenty made enough bold assertions in his economic plan's release yesterday to allow fact-checkers to easily see if his assumptions were correct. The Washington Post did, finding many of the underpinnings of his plan are faulty.

Pawlenty blamed "Obamacare" for spiraling health costs. But, the Post noted, the law doesn't full take effect for three years and the report his campaign cited doesn't attribute costs to the health care reform law.

Pawlenty also said, "Five percent economic growth over 10 years would generate $3.8 trillion in new tax revenues. With that, we would reduce projected deficits by 40 percent. All before we made a single budget cut."

Cool. And probably wrong, the fact-checker said, because the former governor based his math on assuming 5 percent annual growth, which doesn't happen anymore. The last time it did was about 50 years ago.

But the paper reserves its biggest blow for Pawlenty's assertion that cutting 1 percent of the budget for six years would balance it by 2017.

The projected deficit in 2017 is $890 billion. In other words, Pawlenty is proposing so much deficit reduction that he cannot meet his goal even by eliminating ALL spending on nondefense discretionary programs ($462 billion). The military would need to be decimated, or Social Security or Medicare slashed.

The Post gave Pawlenty "two Pinocchios" for his effort.

Continue reading "Carpe per diem (5x8 - 6/8/11)"