True North

Thursday morning, Minnesotans will find out how big the budget deficit is. Most legislators expect it to top $1 billion. It took just one year of DFL mismanagement to turn a $2.163 surplus into a $1 billion deficit. That's a pathetic record to campaign on. Imagine what we'd be staring at if the first DFL budget had become law. Last year's budget increased spending by 9.6 percent. If the DFL had their way, the spending increase would've been close to double that.

It's time to broadcast to voters everywhere that the DFL won't make difficult decisions. It's time to tell them, as Steve Gottwalt so forcefully did, that the DFL isn't interested in setting sensible priorities. It's time we told Minnesotans that the DFL would rather do what their special interest allies want than to stand up for Minnesota's families.

In 2006, the DFL campaigned on no tax increases, on being fiscal moderates. Instead, they've passed budgets that would've created the biggest budget deficit in Minnesota's history. Instead, they would've passed the largest tax increases in the state's history. In short, it's time to remind Minnesota's voters what Mike Hatch said in his acceptance speech after getting the DFL nomination for governor:

Hatch gave his task an initial shot in a rambling acceptance speech that punched some of the right buttons. He cast Pawlenty as too stingy with education, responsible for large class sizes and rising college tuition. He tagged him for an inadequate response to soaring health care costs and the emerging biosciences industry. He promised more state investment in those things. Significantly, he said, " we can do this without raising taxes."

I titled that post "Does anyone believe them?" for a reason. I didn't think that the DFL could help but propose huge tax increases. It's only a matter of time before some scientist disovers that it's part of their genetic code.

Isn't it time for us to take the gloves off & highlight how Gov. Pawlenty's plans are vastly superior to the DFL's & that Gov. Pawlenty's plans don't increase taxes? Shouldn't we be about the business of embarassing the DFL for their daily mismanagement of the Legislature?

Most importantly, it's time that conservatives everywhere, whether they serve in the legislature or if they're party activists, started pointing out all the different tax increases hurt the little guy that the DFL claims to fight for. It's time that we demolished that myth.

If they were for the little guy, they wouldn't have increased license tab fees as dramatically as they did. And don't let them get away with saying that the tab fee increase only affects new cars. Rep. Eastlund got Bernie Lieder to admit that the increased fees applied to used vehicles that aren't registered in Minnesota. Lots of used car lots buy vehicles from outside Minnesota, with lots of them being from North Dakota, Texas & Arizona.

If we make this election a referendum on the DFL's incompetence & coldheartedness, we'll go a long ways toward retaking the House. To do that, we'll need every GOP activist to spread the GOP's message. That necessarily means that we can't have people sitting this one out to 'teach them a lesson'. That means that the people that sat 2006 out had better return with a fire in their belly.

We can't afford another two years of incompetent DFL leadership. In fact, we can't afford the year of DFL mismanagement that we've already had.

Comments welcome at LFR.