Feb 08 Time to Change Directions

Anyone that thinks Minnesota's economic model makes sense needs to get in touch with reality ASAP. What's worse is that the DFL's tax proposals, especially their targeted tax credits, would make Minnesota's economy worse, not better. Small business tax credits are nothing more than picking winners and losers.

Let's be candid about Minnesotans. We're natural-born innovators. It's part of our genetics. When the DFL proposes tax credits for green jobs, etc., what they're really doing is they're telling Minnesota's innovators that they'll benefit if Minnesota's innovators do things that the DFL wants you to do.

The other side to the DFL's tax credits is that Minnesota's innovators will get hit by the same high taxes that we currently have. In other words, if Minnesota's innovators have an idea that doesn't fit into one of the DFL's tax credits, they'll actually get punished by Minnesota's high individual income tax rates.

That isn't the way to prove that Minnesota is business friendly.

To illustrate just how out of touch the DFL is on economic issues, I'll simply point to Speaker Margaret Anderson-Kelliher's quote from her debate with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak on Almanac. Here's what Speaker Kelliher said:

This is about the future. This is about jobs and I'm proud to have passed with bipartisan support the largest job-creating bill the state has seen, the comprehensive transportation bill.

I've said before and I'll repeat it again that the DFL is the party that tries to fund a twentieth centurny government and that the GOP is the party that wants to create a twenty-first century economy. When construction is the heart of anyone's economic plan, that isn't about the future. That's about doing the same thing year after year after year.

David Strom was right when he told KSTP's Tom Hauser that tax credits was a new way for government to pick winners and losers. I've said before that government's record at identifying the next Microsoft, the next Fedex or the next Dell has been terrible. Still, the DFL insists that it knows best. Here's the headline on the DFL's jobs proposal:

Creating Jobs in Minnesota

Follow this link to read the 'details' of their plan. The DFL's plan includes the state paying for remodelling the MOA. That's Twentieth Century thinking, especially compared with North Dakota.

The 3 biggest employers in Minnesota are the state government, the U of M and the federal government. Meanwhile, 13 of North Dakota's 15 biggest employers are in health care industry:

NDSU employs 4,500 people, followed by Altru Clinics and Altru Health Systems, with 3,500 each, Children's Hospital Mericare and Medcenter One Hearing Ctr. with 3,000 employees each, followed by the University of North Dakota with 2,600 employees, then Medcenter Health Systems and Medcenter One each employing 2,200 people. You get the picture.

Unfortunately, the DFL leadership doesn't get it. It's apparently stuck in the mindset that shovel-ready construction jobs remodelling megamalls is the pathway to creating high-paying jobs that will be around a generation or more.

The DFL's plan last year was to rely on tons of stimulus dollars to save their bacon. Now that President Obama's stimulus plan has failed, the DFL is looking for a new plan to trick Minnesota voters. They can't afford to be painted as the party that couldn't create jobs just like they can't afford to be proven that they're the part of annual tax increase attempts.

Unfortunately for the DFL, that image fits them as perfectly as the glass slipper fit on Cinderella's foot.

This is just the DFL's latest desperate attempt to not look the party of big government.

Comments welcome at LFR.