Pawlenty to Legislature: Cut $536 million or I will
The governor bashed DFL lawmakers for cutting only a fraction of the money necessary to balance the budget and frittering away the session on less consequential legislation.
By BAIRD HELGESON, Star Tribune Last update: May 4, 2010 - 11:32 PM
With less than two weeks remaining in the legislative session, Gov. Tim Pawlenty offered up a new round of potentially painful and politically unpopular budget cuts Tuesday as a hoped-for $408 million federal windfall has failed to materialize so far.
Pawlenty announced the cuts amid a flurry of tough talk that shot like a lightning bolt through the heart of what has been an otherwise sleepy budget battle. The governor bashed DFL lawmakers for cutting only a fraction of the money necessary to balance the budget and frittering away the session on less consequential legislation.
"It's ridiculous; in fact, it's pathetic," Pawlenty said at a news conference. "If they won't do it, I'll do it for them," he said, hinting at a possible use of his emergency budget-cutting power, known as unallotment. He used unallotment last summer to unilaterally balance the budget, an action that has been challenged in court.
DFLers accused Pawlenty, a Republican, of being disengaged as he tests a possible run for president and for throwing "a tantrum" when he didn't get his way on earlier budget-cutting recommendations.
"Bring it down a notch," said Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis. "Just bring it down a notch."
Pawlenty and some legislators had penciled in $408 million in likely federal funding to help plug a nearly $1 billion hole in the state budget through next summer.
Without the federal windfall, lawmakers must slice about $536 million from the budget before they adjourn May 17. Pawlenty proposed resurrecting $405 million in cuts that lawmakers have so far rejected, largely in the form of reductions in aid to local governments and human services. To make up the remaining $131 million, Pawlenty proposed deeper cuts to those areas and reductions in aid for the Iron Range. He spared military, veterans and K-12 schools.
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