By: Peter on 5/3/09
Mr. Bly

Sad to see that you employ the oldest tactic out of the DFL's political strategy book.

You use the symptoms rather then cause to promote your agenda. You chose not to discuss the cause of the budget shortfall, because it would illuminate the problem of St.Paul's budgetary problems, which have been caused mostly by the DFL.

I haven't been living here for a long time, but I distinctly remember that our state had a surplus of $ 6 Billion just two years ago. What happened to that money, Mr. Bly ?

In case you forgot, that money was used to increase spending in the MN budget for pet projects and a disproportionate increase in programs overall.
If St. Paul would have chosen to increase the budget based on cost of inflation and people living in MN, we probably would still have a surplus today.

The short sighted budget management of St. Paul defies logic, or maybe not.
By creating future liabilities with short term money, you and your brethren create the crisis of the future. (never let a good crisis go to waste (Rahm Emanuel 2009))

Knowing very well that most fair minded citizens, will oppose cuts in social services, you use this self created crisis, to justify further increases in taxes.

Completely omitting the fact, that this crisis was created by poor budget management in the past.

By any measure you want to apply, MN already has 6th or 12th highest taxes in the USA.
Current DFL plans will make this worse.
As a result more businesses and people will leave the state and further erode the tax base.
Add to this the ever aging population, my question is how are you going to address the future shortfalls, if you can't show discipline today? Or are you conveniently pushing it off to the next people in charge? Like we have done for years now?

Years ago Honeywell and Bull was the largest employer in MN.Government today is the largest employer in MN, this is unsustainable.
Especially since government doesn't produce income it just uses it to expand programs.

It is my sincerest hope, that politicians in St. Paul see the light and start living within their means.
Stop spending money we don't have.

By: KevinB on 5/3/09
You nailed it there, sir. But politicians believe the taxpayers have an endless supply of money and it is there for the Governments taking.
Just ask them sometime. Try and talk to them about budgeting sometime..Clueless. Their idea about budgets are quite different then ours.

By: tch on 5/4/09
According to the DFL playbook, we're all a bunch of pigeons ready to be plucked.

By: OfSilence on 5/11/09
I love this.....let's not at all mention the fact that the budget has remained too high for the last half decade to be sustainable.....with the budgets of education and welfare constantly exhibiting double digit increases year after year. Government spending is unsustainable at the levels it's curently at. This is just a fact any way you slice it. You want no budget cuts? Then get ready to have an additional 10% taken out of your paycheck so that the state can throw more money at programs that dont work (MinnCare, Medical Assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, Education, the list goes on and on). For a city that has two prestigious colleges, I sure hope Northfield doesnt think that Pawlenty is the epicenter of this problem. The GOVERNMENT is the epicenter of this problem. People need to start using their brains before they start taking Keith Olbermann or Sean Hannity's propaganda at face value.