If Minnesotans have had their fill of Pawlenty, and we have, why does he think the rest of the country will want what he’s selling? Who knows? But he seems to be running under the assumption that the best way to win the Republican nomination is to appear “saner” than the rest of the candidates, all while running a completely content-free campaign, full of slogans and absurd assumptions, but quite short on facts. His ridiculous economic plan, to grow at 5% a year for a decade (which hasn’t happened since the Great Depression, even under his hero Ronald Reagan), has been panned by all rational economists, even Republicans. His just-as-laughable “Google test” for government services has been mock just as much (as many commenters have pointed out, since Pawlenty himself exists on Google, doesn’t that mean we don’t need him in government?). His tax plan would balloon the deficit by cutting taxes lower than they are now, even though federal taxes are already at historical lows. But still he clings to these ideas like a bit of flotsam in a storm, hoping that his competitors will drown before him.

It would be nice if he were challenged on some of these things. Why can’t somebody in the media put this graphic (courtesy of Paul Krugman) in front of him and ask him what it means for health care and what he will do about it if President:

Pawlenty had eight years as governor of Minnesota to do something about health care. He didn’t. No bending the cost curve, no successful pilot programs, no real effort to provide health insurance to under-served populations other than what was already in effect. Health care spending rising out of control is one of those serious issues that demands reality-based solutions. Even saying, “I don’t care that people can’t afford health insurance and I will not have the government step into the health care market” would be more honest that some of his current campaign proposals.

I used to think TPaw was Minnesota’s Don Quixote, tilting at windmills without a chance of getting the nomination. Given the terrible field for the Republicans so far, however, it’s not as impossible as I once thought, and that’s a bit frightening. I’ve lived through eight years of Pawlenty in Minnesota, kicking the can down the road, raising taxes without admitting it, and doing little to grow jobs or improve the human and physical capital of the state. I would prefer not to see that happen to the rest of the country. But he’ll try, sloganeering and flip-flopping his way towards a hoped-for nomination.

• Current Mood: Sore
• Currently Listening To: "25 or 6 to 4", Chicago

I think if you asked the general public where the state spent most of its money, you’d get some obviously correct answers (like public schools), but you’d probably also hear things like “welfare” and “free clinics” and “bureaucracy”. What’s true and what isn’t? Once again, the pesky bureaucracy comes through: Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) has a short, simple budget overview document here. What does it say?

First, you have to define where the money is coming from. The majority of money the state collects, and the one that the legislature and governor wrangle over, is the General Fund, which mainly consists of sales taxes, income taxes from individuals and businesses, the statewide property tax on non-residential property, “sin” taxes, and a few more miscellaneous taxes. The state uses the General Fund to pay for most state services. There are some special funds like the Highway User Tax Distribution Fund (HUTDF), the fund that collects money from gas taxes and license tab fees and must be spent on roads per the state constitution, but the most important fund is the General Fund.

The number one destination for General Fund money is K-12 education, just shy of 40%. Most politicians on both sides are very resistant to cutting funding for schools, so if you want to balance the budget without hurting schools, 40% of all spending is immediately off the table for cuts. The next biggest chunk is Health and Human Services (HHS) funding, at almost 30%. This is health care for the sick, the poor (employed and not employed), the elderly, the disabled, people in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, those kinds of things. The third-largest budget area is Local Government Aid (LGA) and other property tax credits, which is money sent from the state to cities and individuals to keep property taxes low, at just under 10%. The last area of the top four is higher education, our state colleges and universities, which is just under 9%.

To recap: K-12 education, HHS, LGA, and higher ed. Those four areas make up almost 90% of the entire state General Fund budget; everything else, like state parks, agricultural programs, environmental protection, prisons, and so forth make up the remainder.

What about some budget items that people think are big parts of the budget, like bureaucracy and welfare? Welfare is part of the HHS budget, but it is a very small part, and it makes up less than 2% of the state’s General Fund budget. If the state were to eliminate welfare completely, not only would it not come close to solving the budget deficit, but it would also mean that Minnesota would lose a good chunk of money from the federal government. Considering that for every dollar people and businesses in Minnesota send to the federal government in the form of federal taxes, we get about 73¢ back, it would be pretty foolish to lose federal funding and make that ratio worse. Similarly, the state bureaucracy is also a tiny portion of the budget, at 1.8%.

This is why there are no easy answers. Cutting the obvious targets would not solve the problem, and cutting the big targets means that there will be pain. Cut K-12 education and you get teacher layoffs and larger class sizes. Cut HHS spending and you get people losing health care. Cut LGA spending and either property taxes will go up or cities and counties will cut back on police officers, fire protection, libraries, and parks. Cut higher ed spending and tuition will go up at the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

So how should the budget be cut?

• Current Mood: Unlucky
• Currently Listening To: "New Year's Day", U2

All in all, it’s a pretty mundane story. Hardly worth even mentioning, you’d think. But taking a closer look at the pieces, it’s not unremarkable at all. I’m very fortunate that I can engage in such a transaction so easily at so little cost to me; for countless people, that just can’t happen, and the distance between my situation and theirs is not as great as one would think.

What it boils down to is the fact that I have good health insurance. My whole life I’m been fortunate to have health insurance, from the time that I was a child getting allergy shots, to college when I had kidney stones and a severe case of tonsillitis and mono, to now when I go to the dentist. Throughout all that time, I (and my parents) had to pay very little out of pocket for care, even when I went to the emergency room on multiple occasions in college. I could very easily have become sick during the brief times I didn’t have insurance, such as between college and getting my first job with coverage, and such an event could have devastated my finances, as shaky as they were straight out of college. However, I was lucky, and still am.

Without insurance, the above story would have been quite different. I probably would not be going to the dentist every six months for checkups, and hence that cavity would not have been discovered until it had grown much larger, large enough to hurt. At that point, I’d have to weigh the pain against going in to have it looked at; without insurance, I would have to pay the entire cost of the checkup myself. When I finally went in, since I had waited so long it would be a far larger problem, and undoubtedly more expensive.

That’s just a toothache. What about when I showed up at the ER with tonsils the size of golfballs and difficulty breathing? (Note: when you hear an ER nurse say “Oh my god” after examining you, it’s not a positive sign) I was in college at the time, without a job, and the bill from that would have been very difficult to pay off had insurance not covered it. Again, had I gotten sick six months later, out of college, I would have been on the hook for the entire bill; it was simply a matter of chance that I got sick when I did.

I don’t believe that a person’s financial stability should be tied to the roulette wheel of when and where they get sick. For this reason, I support universal health care. Also, for this reason, I’m incredibly saddened by the governor’s line-item veto of General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC), eliminating it entirely in the second year of the budget. This is health care for tens of thousands of people making less than $8,000 a year. Yes, the program is expensive: $700 million over two years. Maybe other states don’t have a comparable program. But these are generally older people, some homeless, some veterans, many with chronic medical conditions, many with mental health issues or chemical dependency issues. To me it isn’t overly “generous” to help these people; even putting aside the economic arguments, such as the fact that cutting their coverage now will just increase costs later, it just seems wrong to kick these people when they are down.

I’ve been fortunate in my life so far, but it only takes one catastrophe at the wrong time to change all of that, such as the story yesterday of the successful lawyer, wife, and mother who became struck with debilitating depression and was unable to work full-time. That could be me, or a family member, or a friend, or somebody else in the future. It’s hard, perhaps impossible, not to feel empathy for people in these situations.

On a final note: when I was listening to the debate during the veto override attempt of the elimination of GAMC, the speeches, stories, and passion displayed by so many on the House floor made me proud to be a Democrat.