The Minnesota Senate budget proposal is quite a deal

Here’s a look, for example, at what they have in mind for Health and Human Services. And the environment.

One area of specific note is education. From Education Minnesota:

The education budget proposals by Gov. Tim Walz and the House DFL represent strong first steps toward fully funding our schools. They include:

3 and 2 percent formula increases

Special education funding increase

Dedicated $ for more support staff

$ for paraprofessional training

Full-service community schools funding

Senate Republicans? Not so much:

.5 percent formula increases

ZERO dedicated $ for more support staff

ZERO $ for paraprofessional training

ZERO full-service community schools

Never has the phrase “Minnesota Party of Trump” been more apropos, because there is a suspiciously marked ideological resemblance here to the White House budget plan. Which might seem odd, given Traitor Trump’s job approval ratings here. About the lowest in the upper Midwest, along with Illinois, though the numbers aren't good for him anywhere in our region except in the Dakotas.

Objective, rational people would not produce something like the MN Senate plan. But diehard right-wingers are anything but objective and rational. On the contrary, they strongly tend to reality-bereft cognitive rigidity in the extreme. They also tend to extreme authoritarianism, which will make picking off the two votes that would be needed in the state Senate to pass DFL proposals very challenging. I expect that Minnesota’s next budget will end up looking a lot like the current one. Not awful, but not what it should be. We need the trifecta, beginning in 2021, for that.