Almanac: At the Capitol

In 2005, then-Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson declared "we have enough money in the system. The general knock on Democrats is that we are 'tax and spenders.' Not if I am Majority Leader, we're not."

Of course, just a few months later the Senate proposed a slew of tax increases, including the highest income tax rate in the nation.

Democrats may not want to be known as "tax and spenders"; unfortunately for them and us, that is what they actually are. When push comes to shove, they push for huge tax increases to keep up with all the spending they want to do.

Democrats have been running away from their tax and spend image for years, and the huge majorities in both houses of the Legislature is built on a fragile foundation of Suburban DFL legislators from traditionally Republican Districts.

Almost to a person these Democrats ran as "fiscally conservative and socially moderate," and suburban voters responded. In the poisonous anti-Republican atmosphere that pervaded the election season, that was enough to get many Democrats elected this time around—in some cases by fewer than 100 votes.

This Legislative session, though, is going to be the acid test of whether there actually IS such a thing as a fiscally conservative Democrat in Minnesota any more.

Here's the scoop: In 2003 Governor Pawlenty was faced with a huge budget deficit, amounting to about 15% of the General Fund budget. Despite enormous pressures to raise taxes, Pawlenty and the Legislature crafted a budget that put the State back on the path to fiscal health without raising taxes.

Now here we are in 2007, with a budget surplus of over $2 billion and substantial Democrat majorities in both houses of the Legislature. You would think that this is political gold for the liberals: they get to increase spending for everything and everyone, all without raising taxes.

Have your cake and eat it too!

But noooooooo.... They just can't help themselves. Over the past 2 months of the session we have seen the Democrats propose a whole slew of tax increases, so far mostly aimed at "solving" the transportation "funding crisis." (Didn't we just pass a Constitutional Amendment to deal with that? Oh well, that was LAST year!)

Just yesterday (February 27th) the Mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul proposed not one, not two, but fully SEVEN new tax increases, plus new mechanisms for going into debt (raising FUTURE TAXES) just to fund this one issue area. That has to be a record! (Isn't there a fairy tale called "seven in one blow?")

And we haven't even touched spending increases for education, health care, welfare, early childhood, and on and on and on....

By the end of this session the Democrats will have done more to solidify their rightful image as 'tax and spenders' than all the Republican rhetoric could do in months of negative advertising. And for a simple reason: Democrats in fact ARE tax and spenders.

Unfortunately, as we found out over the past few years, once they are in power for a while Republicans too fall into the trap of becoming tax and spenders.

All this happens for a simple reason: When you are in government, especially at the level of State Legislators, you actually do precious little OTHER that deal with issues of taxes and spending.

After all, Legislators don't educate; they SPEND MONEY to pay others to educate.

Legislators don't enforce laws, they spend money for others to find and jail criminals.

Legislators don't build or fix roads; they spend money to pay others to do so.

With few exceptions, pretty much all Legislators do is tax and spend. That's why Democrats have traditionally been the party of government: they love to tax and spend.