Governor Veto

Yesterday's Rochester Post-Bulletin Pawlenty-bashing editorial, Pawlenty's veto hurts Rochester, families, was yet another half-baked liberal commentary disguised as political analysis. For a much fairer and more accurate examination of Governor Tim Pawlenty's courageous stand against abusive taxation, look no further than the following op-ed from today's Wall Street Journal. Thanks to Carla Nelson for forwarding it to me.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL REVIEW OUTLOOK

Governor Veto
June 5, 2007; Page A22

If he's looking for tips on handling Nancy Pelosi, President Bushmight want to consult Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. The Republican Governor is using his veto power to good effect on policy and making himself more popular.

Last month the Democrats who run the Legislature in St. Paul pushed through a big tax and spending increase in their $35 billion state budget. Last week Mr. Pawlenty responded by vetoing all six of the spending and tax bills the Democrats sent him. The usual media and interest group suspects are upset, but Mr. Pawlenty is rallying his own supporters and making himself a defender of the taxpaying middle class.

In Minnesota, as in many other states last November, Democrats picked up big majorities in both the state House and Senate. First on the Democratic wish list was a budget plan of the kind now being promoted by the party's Presidential candidates: Offer a few tax savings to the middle class but whack "the rich" with a huge tax hike, and use the revenue windfall to finance teacher pay raises, "universal health care," $200 million in subsidies for the Mall of America, and even a pay raise for legislators. The Democratic plan would have raised the state's top marginal income tax rate to 9.7% from 7.85%. That's right up there with California, New York and New Jersey in the top five of confiscatory taxation states.

Democrats also proposed a gas tax hike, a new real estate tax, and a tax on cell phones. In all, Democrats wanted to raise some $5 billion in income taxes, and new taxes on gas, beer, real estate transactions, cell phones and even a strange new death tax: a tripling of taxes on hearses. These would have raised taxes by about $2,000 for every income tax filer in the state. The Minnesota League of Taxpayers parodied the budget plan as here a tax, there a tax, everywhere a tax, tax.

Every Republican in the House voted to sustain Mr. Pawlenty's veto, and the state GOP, which fractured last year, is unifying around the fiscal debate. "We ran the table on the Democrats," says Mike Wigley, the chairman of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. "We got no new taxes, no bonding bill for the first time in a decade, and a budget lower than what the Governor proposed at the start of the year."

Mr. Pawlenty is under pressure from Democrats to negotiate a new budget, but he holds the political high ground. One reason Congressional Republicans were run out of their majority was because they lost their "brand" identity as conservative fiscal stewards. Mr. Pawlenty narrowly survived re-election in that dreadful Republican year. Now he's shrewdly expending political capital to good effect to beat back Democratic tax-and-spend policies that could damage Minnesota for years to come.

Are Republicans in Washington paying attention?