Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Two very different governors

While our governor, Scott Walker, was announcing record cuts to the University of Wisconsin this week and lecturing professors to get to work, Minnesota's Gov. Mark Dayton was proposing a different agenda.

Unlike Walker's Wisconsin, Minnesota has seen some great economic times under Democrat Dayton.

So, sitting on a billion-dollar surplus, the Minnesota chief executive says he will propose to spend half of that surplus on education and policies that benefit children.

Specifically, he proposes to expand the state's child care tax credit and invest $30 million in the University of Minnesota Medical School. Of the $516 million he is proposing for kids, $372 million would go toward education, $44 million for human services and $100 million for the child care tax credits.

Back home in Wisconsin, Walker, who keeps insisting he's turned Wisconsin around, has to figure how to fill a $2 billion budget hole, but he's still hoping to have another tax cut at the same time. Hence, big cuts to the UW and who knows what else are in store for Wisconsin folks when he announces his budget next week.

While Walker has been practicing the austerity economics known as trickle down during his time in office, Dayton's different economic philosophy has produced some happy results — and he isn't even running for president.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/editorial/two-very-different-governors/article_eafc5c84-5627-5df8-9525-f7def99f06a5.html#ixzz3QR7QeEYF