Dayton’s Budget 2.0 Road Trip: Hope > Experience

In a classic triumph of hope over experience, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is taking his Budget 2.0 on a road trip.  Most of the controversial bits from Budget 1.0 were jettisoned, but a few zingers remain.

Dayton is still seeking to raise income tax rates on higher earning households.  His “snowbird  tax” on out-of-state residents remains in the mix.  The snowbird tax has been laughed at from coast to coast to coast.  However, the Governor’s trip will not extend beyond the state’s borders, so it is unlikely that he will run into any potential victims of the tax.

We are now well into the third month of one-party rule in Minnesota.  Democrats control all the levers of power in St. Paul and in the state’s largest cities and counties.  Their progressive allies control the K-12 public school system, the public universities, local media, and the non-profit community.

So it’s fair to ask:  why is there still suffering in Minnesota?  Why have all of the state’s problems not been solved?  What is standing in the way of a snow-covered utopia?

With the passage of the new health care exchange bill, the current legislature has passed exactly 9 laws this term, by coincidence the same number passed by this point in the 2011 session.  You remember 2011, the days of gridlock and partisanship, when no state business was done.

It’s early days yet, there is still time for the new Democrat majorities to legislate the state into oblivion.  But what is the hold up?  Nirvana awaits!