Good morning, and happy Thursday.
Democrats at the Minnesota Capitol laid out their top session priorities Wednesday. They include codifying the right to an abortion, setting up a paid family and medical leave program, expanding voting rights and fast tracking Minnesota’s clean energy goals. MPR’s Dana Ferguson reports: Plans to put in place a $3,000 per child tax credit to help parents pay for child care and set penalties for buying catalytic converters that appear stolen were also on the DFL list, as were banning price gouging, funding universal free school meals and boosting funding to public schools to offset the price of offering special education and English learner programs. Another priority is setting up a buy-in option to the state’s MinnesotaCare program. Democrats said that after years of seeing their policy goals hit a wall in the GOP-led Senate, they had a new path to make many changes this year with the new political structure at the Capitol. And they planned to take advantage of that. “In short, our priorities are Minnesota's priorities,” Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, DFL-Minneapolis, said. “It's what the people across the state told us they want us to do. And we plan to do that.”
Not on the list: eliminating the tax on Social Security income and legalizing marijuana. On the Social Security taxes, House Speaker Melissa Hortman said, “We know that has exploding tails, which means it's very expensive in the future,” adding that it was still in the mix. On marijuana, supporters plan a news conference today to announce details of their legislation.
Another item on the fast track is a mini tax bill.MPR’s Brian Bakst reports: There’s a tax bill already moving at the Minnesota Capitol just days into the new legislative session. But this is the easy part – syncing up state tax deductions to federal changes of recent years. The Legislature will take more time deciding on possible rebate checks and other tax breaks where there's much less agreement among lawmakers. Updates to Minnesota’s tax code happen a lot. They are often done to line up deductions allowed at the federal level so they also apply to state income tax forms. During the pandemic, federal changes happened at a much quicker clip than at the state. Minnesota lawmakers are feeling some pressure to catch up, as House Taxes Chair Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, told her colleagues Wednesday. “Most of it, in addition to the kind of business extenders, is really about responding to COVID,” Gomez said. “And so it's the right thing for us to not create a situation where people have to introduce more and more complexity into their tax filing related to those things.”
State Senators decided Wednesday to keep their option to vote from home in place for another year after debating and ultimately rejecting a proposal to strip the remote voting option that took effect during the pandemic. Sen. Eric Pratt, R-Prior Lake, said that as COVID-19 ebbs, lawmakers should be at the Capitol if they want to cast a vote. "People expect us to be here. They expect us to be working together, having conversations,” Pratt said. That can't happen if we're not in this chamber." Democrats, and some Republicans, sought to uphold the remote option, arguing that it would allow senators in difficult situations to have more flexibility. "This isn't golfing -- this is a family or medical situation and we've experienced a few of those over the last few years,” said Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic. “They should be able to vote remotely." Senators also approved rules that prohibit them from drawing daily expense payments while they work remotely and require that they say what city they're in when they vote remotely. They also for the first time will allow water bottles on the Senate floor so that senators can stay hydrated during long debates.
In Washington, Republicans will try for a third day to elect a speaker of the House. The Associated Press reports: House Republicans flailed through a long second day of fruitless balloting Wednesday, unable to either elect their leader Kevin McCarthy as House speaker or come up with a new strategy to end the political chaos that has tarnished the start of their new majority. Yet McCarthy wasn’t giving up, even after the fourth, fifth and sixth votes produced no better outcome and he was left trying to call off a nighttime session. Even that was controversial, as the House voted 216-214 — amid shouting and crowding — to adjourn for the night. “No deal yet,” McCarthy said shortly before that as he left a lengthy closed-door dinnertime meeting with key holdouts and his own allies. “But a lot of progress.” No progress at all was evident though the day of vote after vote after vote as Republicans tried to elevate McCarthy into the top job. The ballots produced almost the same outcome, 20 conservative holdouts still refusing to support him and leaving him far short of the 218 typically needed to win the gavel.
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