Almanac: At the Capitol

I'm a Democrat. This means that I should be incensed right now at the results of the recently-concluded legislative session, right?

Not so much.

Don't get me wrong, I think the DFL caucuses got thrashed in the public relations war. While DFL leaders were and remain on the right and just and upstanding side of the issues, they crafted no coherent narrative of why their stands are the right way forward for Minnesota. There are issues at the leadership and communications levels that will need to be addressed if the DFL hopes for more success in 2008, both at the Capitol and at the ballot box.

But let's pull back and put this session in perspective. Raise your hand if you've ever heard the saying "representative democracy is a bad form of government — it's just better than anything else out there..." or something like it. It holds true at times like these. Governmental deadlock is annoying, for sure, and has short-term detrimental effects. But in the longer run, that deadlock and the checks-and-balances system that causes it are gifts to us from the Founding Fathers. Co-equal branches of government, especially those controlled by opposing parties, mean consensus must be reached for anything to get done. Deadlock, committee process, parliamentary procedure, and even arcane traditions like the U.S. Senate's filibuster mean that no one group can shove an agenda into law through sheer force of will and arm-twisting. And those factors leave us where we are today, with a state government that hasn't done much to help where they might have, but hasn't done much to hurt either.

Consider also where the Legislature was a few years ago. Gone are the days of the State Senate stonewalling on things like Michele Bachmann's anti-civil-rights constitutional amendement and voter suppression. Instead, the pressure is on the Republican minorities and Governor Pawlenty to support or defeat DFL priorities.

Lost in the bloviation and crowing from such conservative luminaries as my AATC Brain Trust colleagues, House Minority Leader Marty Seifert and David Strom of the Taxpayers' League, is what marginal DFL-sponsored tax increases would have paid for — a sound fiscal policy that would have fixed disintegrating roads, provided relief from property tax increases by bringing high-earning Minnesotans' tax rates in line with the middle and working classes, and pushed more funding into classrooms across the state.

Many of these initiatives were defeated. But there's still another legislative session coming next year, and the DFL will still control both chambers of the Legislature. I would much rather control the debate, the issues, and the agenda heading into an election than be forced, as former Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson was, to stonewall against a reactionary right-wing fusion of public policy and electoral strategy.

The public demands a progressive, people-powered public policy regime. It's only a matter of time — and a little improvement here and there in the DFL's PR machine. A frustrating session? To be sure. But worth being angry about? As Martin Luther King said and Senator Barack Obama echoed recently, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Right now, that arc just needs a little bit more organized pressure from DFL leaders and their supporters.

1. Let Speaker Kelliher take the lead in negotiations with the Governor. Senator Pogemiller must support Kelliher as much as possible. Her DFL House caucus is at most political risk with an election in two years.


2. Work with Republicans as soon as possible to send a nickel gas tax increase to the Governor. Governor, go ahead and veto it. But let legislators do their will and override it. You win and they win. That's a good start for the rest of the negotiations.


3. Determine the bottom-line number that Democrats must have to cover their priorities of property tax relief and education. Everyone knows they've raised more revenue in their bills than they expect to get. Get to the bottom line.


4. Dip into the budget reserve and dust off the accounting gimmicks to get as close to the number as possible. It is a terrible way to run a railroad, or worse yet a state, but it gets you to adjournment, assuming the Governor won't budge. In the end everyone is better off.


5. Agree to work together over the interim to create a real vision for Minnesota's future. Work with the Citizens League ... seriously ... and try the old-fashioned approach of creating the vision of what we want the state to look like in five or ten years. We are at loggerheads now because we are arguing about budget pieces that don't fit into a visionary whole. Neither party built a comprehensive vision and got Minnesotans to buy into it. We are arguing over the size of the cars on the train at the station, but we've really never defined where the train is going.


6. Stay civil. Keep Sen. Pogemiller away from the Governor and the media. To his credit, Poge has done a great job of staying under the radar. One blow-up or burst of public anger from Pogemiller, will cause the Governor to dig in his heels even more. Then the Governor wins for sure. Remember Mike Hatch?


7. When it gets down to the really tense times and everything stalls, put a few first- and second-term legislators in the negotiating room for a reality check. They know what they need to bring home more than anyone ... and that includes an orderly end.


8. The Governor is fishing. Legislative leaders should do the same and celebrate Mother's Day. Get back to the real world. Honestly, you get so isolated and caught up in the drama at the Capitol during the end. It's not normal.

Eleven days and counting.

Well, I have been saying for some time now that this game is going into extra innings, and as the end of session races towards us this is becoming obvious to just about everyone.

The one thing that surprises me is how BADLY the Democrats miscalculated. If I were to predict the eventual outcome today, I would have to say that the Democrats will get entirely routed and the Governor walks away smelling like a rose.

There are a few reasons for why this is coming to pass. First, it is a truism that governors usually get most of what they want because they have the veto pen and the bully pulpit to work with. This year, though, Pawlenty is benefiting from several other very important factors that actually enhance his power quite a bit.

Ironically, the very size of the DFL majorities has turned out to be a serious liability. If the Dems had only a few-seats margin in each body they would be naturally cautious. However, their huge majorities have encouraged them to seriously overreach, presenting the Governor with nice fat rhetorical targets to shoot down.

Add to the overreach the near zealotry of the hard-core liberals and you have a recipe for dissention among the DFLers, particularly in the Senate. Pogemiller has set things up to be death match battle with the Governor, and in such a battle he is almost certain to lose. Other DFLers see this and it will make it very difficult for them to follow Pogie, because he is leading them into the jaws of hell.

One more factor that the DFLers don't seem to get: Their argument that Pawlenty won't compromise is a political loser. To most people that is like saying Pawlenty is being mean and unreasonable, and that doesn't square with their experience. The public LIKES Tim Pawlenty, so going after him for being rigid and nasty is bound to fail. People like Tim and will side with him against an amorphous and faceless Legislature every time.

So ... Pawlenty is playing this game with at least a full house in his hands, and by the look of his actions he may have a straight flush. DFLers have squandered a great opportunity to push some elements of their agenda through (thank God!), and will be lucky if they leave the session without a serious divide in, at least, the Senate Caucus.

If the Democrats over at the Capitol have their way, Minnesotans can start bragging to the rest of the country about how our tax rates are higher than anybody else's.

Oh joy!

Of course, for all that tax money being extorted out of average Minnesotans, the Democrats are promising to fix all the "damage" done to the State by years of fiscal neglect. To hear them tell it, Minnesota has been on a downward slide for nearly 2 decades, and only a "surge" in government spending can save us.

Now of course the Democrats are right that you need to spend enough on the basics, or you will wind up paying a price into the future. Paved roads are better than dirt roads, and paved roads without potholes better still.

Where they go wrong, of course, is the assumption that if some is necessary, more will be clearly better.

That rarely works in real life. A dash of pepper might make your salad taste better, but try a tablespoon and you will understand immediately what I mean.

Paved streets might be a good thing, but streets paved with gold are just plain stupid.

The same is true for most government services. Paying a teacher $70,000 to teach the same thing to the same size class in the same classroom gets you no better results than paying the teacher $45,000 to do the same thing.

It's results, or in economic parlance productivity, that matters. Unless an investment increases productivity in some real way, it's not an investment at all, just consumption. And that's what the Democrats are proposing: lots more consumption, not necessarily lots better results.

One of the perverse incentives in government is that we reward having a problem, not having a solution. That's why the fastest growing parts of the budget are precisely the most complained about issues: education, health care, and transportation. As long as we keep paying government to have problems in these areas, you can bet they will continue to have crises.

Imagine the day a Democrat or a government official tells you that these problems are solved and we don't need to keep throwing money at them and growing government. You can't. The game that liberals play is to keep promising solutions that are just around the corner.

That's how you keep the money flowing, government employment growing, and hence more votes for bigger government.

It's not going to work this time, though.

Governor Pawlenty is playing with a winning hand, and I think he knows it.
Minnesotans aren't hungering for huge tax increases, and so far that's what the Democrats are offering them. Unless something radical happens in the next few weeks, the Legislature will throw over to the Governor spending and tax bills that can only get vetoed, and Pawlenty will win these battles easily.

Nobody has a clear idea who will blink first in this game of chicken, but I'm betting the Governor will win these battles because the Democrats are overplaying their hands. But until we get close to a government shutdown, it's hard to see who has an incentive to give in.

So sit back and enjoy the game, because it's going into extra innings.