I need somebody to help me make sense of this. Walz & company just stole around 17 billion dollars from the taxpayers of Minnesota. The biennium budget for 2022 & 2023 was 52 billion dollars or about 26 billion per year. Those are fixed numbers, the numbers the state operates by.
Now the 17 billion dollar tax surplus is taxes that the state collected above and beyond any forecasts. This is a overpayment, much like if you hand the nice machine at Walmart a 10 dollar bill to pay for a purchase. The nice machine returns you change for a 100 dollar bill. Under law the 90 dollar mistake isn’t yours and needs to be returned to Walmart. On the state level it seems it’s treated as “finders keepers” and tough $hit you overpaid.
So now back to the budget. Walz and friends stole the 17 billion, there is no questioning that. It wasn’t theirs to give meager rebate checks. It wasn’t theirs to reallocate to pet projects. It wasn’t theirs to spend on education, infrastructure ect. Those are budget items that were agreed to for the current biennium.
Not on the ledge ready to leap off. But I’m not really ready to give the band of thieves a pass on this either. It won’t be the last you hear of this. BTW, they stole part of the money (yours) and used it on hatchery’s & accesses and then raised fee’s in other areas. You have the privilege of paying twice.
Maybe I’d look differently on this if the band of thieves said hey…. Lets credit the whole surplus against the 2023 budget, or lets pay down the state debt by 17 billion dollars, which would have been the honorable thing to do. But no……they stole it.
And just to be clear, it was both the Democrats & Republicans that did this. Walz was just the pivot on this particular circle jerk.