Announcing the
deal that should reopen Minnesota's government within days, Gov. Mark Dayton said:
"No one is going to be happy with this, which is the essence of a real compromise[.]"
That was being overly generous to Republican leaders, since as we've seen Dayton had offered repeated compromises. Though Republicans did ultimately bend on a few points in the final deal, Dayton had traveled by far the greater distance.
Republicans refused to tax 7,700 millionaires to balance the budget, preferring instead to kick $1.4 billion in borrowing down the road for a future budget to deal with. Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk:
However, he added, “let’s be very clear about what this budget deal means for Minnesota: Rather than asking the richest 0.3 percent of Minnesotans to pay their fair share, Republicans instead chose to solve the state’s budget crisis with a borrow-and-spend proposal that does nothing to solve the long-term financial challenges.”
The details of the plan are not completely known, but the basic framework is:
Dayton shocked some Democrats and other supporters earlier in the day when he said he was dropping his push to raise taxes on high earners and instead would accept a June 30 GOP offer that featured a $700 million money shift from K-12 school spending and roughly $700 million in tobacco revenue bonds.
Dayton's move means the deepest cuts in services will be averted, but it abandoned his campaign goal of balancing the budget by raising taxes on high earners.
He will also be able to claim credit for preserving thousands of state jobs by forcing Republicans to drop a proposed 15 percent reduction in state workers and for a $500 million bonding proposal that will kick-start private sector jobs. Dayton further got Republicans to eliminate controversial social policies from spending bills.
According to The UpTake, those "controversial social policies" include voter ID, abortion and stem cell restrictions, and school vouchers. That leaves some Republicans unhappy.
Final bills still need to be hammered out before Dayton calls a special session of the legislature to vote, reopening the state's government.