Tim Pawlenty has made a serious attempt to ruin everything that's been so good about the state of Minnesota, and barely anyone on the national level has heard anything about it.
For someone who has built his national career on his financial record, he's done a horrible job of actually BALANCING the budget. Sure, he didn't raise taxes, but he plunged our state into a massive deficit and made most of his cuts to local government aid, which has driven up property taxes across the state as local governments try to pay their teachers and policemen. His budget also relies on $408 million in federal funding that he often decries when speaking in Iowa and South Carolina, as well as education funding shifts that will force local school districts to pay back the interest on their own.
The point is that while Pawlenty hasn't raised taxes, it isn't as if he's been a good steward of state budget. He's simply forced other people to take care of his mess for him.
I wrote this diary because I'm sick of articles like this one from Politico and others that talk about what a good job he's done build a national conservative portfolio out of his work in Minnesota, adn I think few people realize what a disaster he has been.
When Republicans talk about the good work Pawlenty has done, tell them about Minnesota's drop in public health rankings. Tell them about his budget's reliance on federal funding from the Democratic Congress that he uses to fix his own problems and then turns around and blasts when he's at teabagger fundraisers. He has blocked a revenue increase that would have only affected those making over $250,000 per year and would have drawn 75% of its revenue from those making over half a million dollars, and would have been eliminated once the state's budget reached equilibrium. (Note the headline of that last article from the St. Cloud Times, located in the heart of Michele Bachmann's district: "Pawlenty veto leaves budget void as session erodes"). Tell them about the Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that he illegally broke the Minnesota constitution to make cuts in health and nutrition programs for the poor, slash education funding, increase state college tuition rates, and local government aid.
As lawmakers struggled ferociously to negotiate for a deal on Saturday as the session wound down, Tim Pawlenty went fishing on a lake on the border of the U.S. and Canada, and came back late in the afternoon to veto and reject another proposal from the legislature.
This man is not a leader, he is a roadblock who has refused to compromise at every turn, and the truth needs to be told about the irreparable damage he has done before he leaves office in January of 2011 and heads straight to Iowa to continue his presidential campaigning at the expense of the people of Minnesota.
And what's on the horizon? Check out 2010 Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer, who has said that the AZ Immigration Law is "a good start", and has pledged to "put Minnesota back on the right track"... by which he means, of course, a drastic cut in Government spending and tax cuts for the rich and not a break from Pawlenty's disastrous policies and refusal to compromise at all with the Democratic legislature.