GOP Responds to Governor’s Budget Proposal

(KNSI) – Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka and House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt issued a response to Governor Tim Walz’s $52.4 billion budget proposal put forward Tuesday.

The plan calls for plugging a projected $1.28 billion budget gap by taking some money from this year’s surplus, adding about $1 billion from the budget reserve and $130 million from the stadium reserve. It would also expand the lowest tax bracket and create a new fifth tax bracket for the top wage earners.

Gazelka immediately disagreed with Governor Walz on raising taxes, saying, “We want Minnesota to be affordable to everybody in Minnesota. And so one of the things that we said, and we will continue to say is we’re not going to raise taxes on anyone. And if you look at this, this budget that the Governor’s proposed is there’s a lot of taxes on a lot of people.”

Gazelka maintains that Senate Republicans will work with the Governor and the DFL-led house, but the state should dip into what it has before taking it from taxpayers.

“And as when we look at the budget, we say, we can balance the budget, which is our responsibility, we will work with the Governor, we will work with the house to balance the budget, but we have reserves. And I’ve talked to both the speaker and the Minority Leader of the Senate, and I believe I’ve heard the Governor say it too, but reserves were meant for a rainy day. And I’ve heard this multiple times from many people on the other side of the aisle, they would say, it’s raining.”

Gazelka says the budget doesn’t go far enough to help small businesses recover from government-mandated shutdowns, get kids back into classrooms after mostly distance learning for the last year, address failing schools, and nothing to speed up vaccine distribution to bring life back to normal.

Leader Daudt says the budget offers a lot of great talking points and jumping-off point for negotiations but argues about two-thirds of the taxes in this proposal will disproportionately hit low-income Minnesotans, and “that is exactly the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. In addition to that, there’s a lot of taxes on the people who we need to be successful right now. And those are job creators. Those are corporations. We heard him say in his press conference that he wants to tax the profitable companies. That’s a very basic understanding of the way taxes work. We actually do tax profits. But unfortunately, we don’t want to tax profits anymore right now and make it more difficult for corporations. Big and small. And the small ones are the ones I care about. We don’t need to make it more difficult for small companies to hire and really help us grow out of this economic recession. We need them to be successful. And that’s what’s going to help us. Unfortunately, the Governor is going to do everything he can to hurt those small businesses.”

Daudt says the budget contains $941 million in regressive tax increases but only $36 million in tax cuts to a million Minnesotans, equating to $3 a month in savings when Minnesotans hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic fallout need real help.

The legislature and Governor have until June 30th to come up with a budget for the next two-year cycle.