When state lawmakers return from spring break the question will be, can Republicans and Democrats bridge their very wide gap on how to use the state’s nine-billion-dollar budget surplus — for tax cuts, education or something else — and what about Minnesota’s crime wave? Hamline University political analyst David Schultz says at the beginning of the session, he and others noted that nothing really had to get done:
…”and that, instead, the session would be, let’s say, cloaked in posturing for the 2022 elections — and I think largely that’s turned out to be the case so far.”
Schultz says there’s a possibility of “something small”….
…”so that everybody can claim a little bit of a victory, but in the sense of a kind of a grand compromise or grand bargain, I’m not seeing that emerging right now.”
One of the main reasons is that, because this is not a formal “budget year,” state government will not shut down July 1st if Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on a revised budget, prompted by the record-breaking surplus.
