Good morning, and welcome to another Monday.
Gov. Tim Walz will propose the final parts of his budget this week. MPR’s Brian Bakst has a look at what he’s already announced and what might come next: Billions more for public schools, seed money for an ambitious paid-family leave program, large raises for health care workers: Gov. Tim Walz is going big in his budget plans, those he’s released already and in forecasting what’s to come. The two budgets he proposed in his first term also bid high only to be hemmed in by Republican opposition. This time he’s got well-placed DFL allies and a giant budget surplus to carry his ideas forward. “The chance between now and May when we finish up the legislative session and the implementation of this budget will have a profound impact on every single family across the state in a positive way,” Walz said when he put out proposals around education and child poverty last week. Of the items Walz has proposed already, the cost would be about $7.8 billion on top of what the state spends now in the same areas. His public schools package alone totals more than $4.4 billion in added spending between now and mid-2025, with far more built into the years after.
There was a lot of activity around the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that guaranteed abortion rights under the U.S. Constitution. MPR’s Mark Zdechlik reports: Thousands gathered on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol Sunday afternoon. The March for Life, organized by Minnesota Citizens Concerned For Life, has been held since the first anniversary of the Roe decision. The reversal they had been fighting for came from the high court last summer in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Now, their efforts are focused on stopping DFL-led efforts to codify abortion protections into Minnesota state law. The Minnesota Senate is set to debate the Protect Reproductive Options or PRO Act this week after it was passed by the Minnesota House on Thursday.
Legislators calling themselves the Minnesota Reproductive Freedom Caucus outlined their priorities Friday for the 2023 legislative session, including guaranteeing the right to abortion, defending people who come to Minnesota from other states seeking abortions, and removing abortion restrictions from state statutes. MPR’s Dana Ferguson reports: Days before the of the Roe v. Wade decision, the group of dozens of DFL lawmakers said they were committed to ensuring and expanding the right to abortion in Minnesota. They also said the state should adopt other policies that support parents and families and allow Minnesotans to express their gender freedom. After Minnesota voters gave the DFL majority control at the Capitol, the caucus said it felt mandated to affirm existing abortion rights and to add more protections for patients and providers. “We will not leave this session without completing this work,” Sen. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said. “We are talking about autonomy. We're talking about human rights, we are talking about private medical decisions. Those are not negotiable.”
One target for that caucus is state money going to 'crisis pregnancy centers.' MPR’s Sam Stroozas reports: Since 2005, Minnesota has given over $3 million in taxpayer money every grant cycle to 25 of these centers under the “positive alternatives grant,” a program created by former Gov. Tim Pawlenty to discourage abortion. Now with a DFL hold on the state, Walz says he’s ready to end the program, citing misinformation. “I think that there’s a lot of misinformation that came out of that … I think women deserve better than that, I think they deserve to have the whole picture,” he told MPR News. This comes after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison issued a consumer alert in August against “crisis pregnancy centers” based on a 2021 study of nine states including Minnesota. He defined them as “private organizations that seek to prevent people from accessing abortion care as well as contraceptives.” Those in support of these centers argue that they provide essential services and, post Roe, they’re expanding across the country. However, the study from The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, called “Designed to Deceive,” found that “crisis pregnancy centers” across states provide almost no actual medical care. The most common services offered were pregnancy tests, “free” material goods, “counseling,” and “non-diagnostic” ultrasounds. Most don’t offer prenatal care.
Repealing the state tax on Social Security income is still a hot topic at the Capitol. The Star Tribune has a closer look: A proposal to eliminate that state tax is gaining momentum at the Minnesota Capitol, where a growing number of Democrats are rallying behind the idea as a way to cut costs for seniors. The Department of Revenue estimates 473,000 Minnesota filers would see an average $1,276 in relief if the tax were eliminated. But the idea has divided the party in power, with some Democrats in leadership worried about the proposal's hefty price tag. A full repeal would blow a $1.3 billion hole in state finances over the next two years and even more in the following two-year budget. The idea is competing for a slice of a $17.6 billion budget surplus with other items on Democrats' agenda, many of those focusing on the other end of the age spectrum — children, families and classrooms.
The Associated Press has a profile of Minnesota U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, now the House majority whip who helped wrangle Republican votes to get Rep. Kevin McCarthy elected House Speaker. From the piece: Emmer is not part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In fact, some Republicans did not think he was conservative enough for the whip post. But he won his own internal GOP election to become the whip, brushing back two challengers. When it came time to broker the deal for McCarthy’s election, Emmer had to win over some of those same conservative holdouts. One of the many key concessions McCarthy made to earn the votes of his detractors was a commitment to return federal spending to 2022 budget levels. Cuts of that size would amount to an 8 percent reduction in domestic defense, veterans and domestic accounts — or even more, 17 percent, if the Pentagon money is spared. The Republicans also agreed to aim for a balanced budget in 10 years. From Emmer’s point of view, much of what was agreed to with the holdouts is “aspirational.” “Some might criticize me when I say it’s an aspirational document because they think it’s more than that, and they’re right,” Emmer said. “Because we now have to hold ourselves to this.”
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