Rep. Kurt Bills Needs To Give A More Honest Budget Assessment

Rep. Kurt Bills (Rosemount) on Apple Valley Patch "bragging" about the additional surplus coming from the budget forecast.

I think he left out a few things. Let's go over it....

In just one year, new leadership in the Legislature has taken Minnesota from a $5.1 billion budget shortfall to $1.2 billion in surplus funds. The budget we passed in 2011 helped us change our economic fortunes by limiting government growth, providing long-term spending restraint and creating opportunities for private-sector job growth.

Alright, let's just look at the real numbers.

The budget was balanced last year via two methods. First, we had an additional school shift...which was added onto a previous school shift. Metro Minnesota school districts, last year alone, had to borrow $382 million to keep the status quo. That, alone, would take all of the budget surplus that was just reported.

Secondly, the tobacco bond fiasco. Here's the real economic facts:

The bonds are backed by future payments from the state's 1998 settlement with tobacco companies. The state will eventually pay bondholders $1.2 billion over the life of the 20 year bonds.

Astonishing. $1.2 billion in interest. In other words, Rep. Bills' "solution" to our budget actually borrowed money from the next 20 years to pay for a "hamburger" today - to paraphrase Wimpy from Popeye.

My numbers tell me we still came out with a net negative.

In addition, economists say the surplus we are getting now has come from fewer people on state health care due to an improving Minnesota economy....which would have happened anyway.

More ....

Along the way, Minnesota’s unemployment rate has shrunk to 5.7-percent, far below the 8.5-percent national average. Minnesota's unemployment rate is falling faster than the national average, another real sign we are in better shape than most states. This job growth may have been stonewalled had we raised taxes by billions as some proposed last year.

First...a lot of that job growth happened before this budget was in place and secondly, as an economist, Rep. Bills should know by now that jobs happen for a multitude of reasons. Since a lot of our economy is agriculture—a sector that has done fairly well recently—we had a natural opportunity to come back quicker.

It is a little disturbing that a teacher in economics can't present budget issues in an honest way. Bills has chosen to put a partisan spin on it because it is an election year.

Rep. Bills ends this way:

Two consecutive budget surpluses should provide all the incentive in the world for us to stay on task, continue positioning Minnesota to meet the demands of today’s economy and weather the challenges tomorrow may throw our way.

I would assume that "stay on task" means we will be getting more of the same budget shenanigans that we suffered through last year. I truly hope that Rep. Bills doesn't mean that.

The state can't afford it.