After nearly three weeks the stand off between the Republican held Minnesota Congress and Democratic Governor finally came to an end last week. The debate was over the approximately 5 billion dollar deficit left by our ex Governor now presidential candidate Tim
Pawlenty, of BS. The congress was looking to slash government spending to make up for the short fall where the current governor wanted to balance the budget through spending cuts and raising taxes on the top 4% of wage earners, so they would pay the same percentage as the rest of us
Minnesotans.
Even after the Governor came half way in the negotiations and added more spending cuts and was looking to increase taxes on only the top 2%, about 60,000 people, the congress would not budge and so on July 1st with no budget agreement the government shut down. Thousands of government employees were laid off as well as many private employees that worked for government contractors, like those working on fixing the roads. Schools, cities and counties did not get any of their budgeted many from the state. The state lottery shut down cutting the state
revenue even more. Thousands of people had their plans ruined as the state parks were closed up and hotels,
restaurants, car rental agencies and the airlines lost money because many tourists went to places other then Minnesota. Finally the governor gave in. He could not take all of the punishment that the shutdown was placing on the state and its citizens. He accepted a plan from the borrow and spend congress which balanced the budget on a combination of cuts and borrowing. He did manage to get some of the
awful parts of the Republican budget expunged. So the everything is now getting back to normal but at some point in the future people will need to realize that all of the great things in life that we take for granted every day are not free and the way that we pay for all of the good stuff that the government and society grant us is through our taxes.
After nearly three weeks the stand off between the Republican held Minnesota Congress and Democratic Governor finally came to an end last week. The debate was over the approximately 5 billion dollar deficit left by our ex Governor now presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, of BS. The congress was looking to slash government spending to make up for the short fall where the current governor wanted to balance the budget through spending cuts and raising taxes on the top 4% of wage earners, so they would pay the same percentage as the rest of us Minnesotans.
Even after the Governor came half way in the negotiations and added more spending cuts and was looking to increase taxes on only the top 2%, about 60,000 people, the congress would not budge and so on July 1st with no budget agreement the government shut down. Thousands of government employees were laid off as well as many private employees that worked for government contractors, like those working on fixing the roads. Schools, cities and counties did not get any of their budgeted many from the state. The state lottery shut down cutting the state revenue even more. Thousands of people had their plans ruined as the state parks were closed up and hotels, restaurants, car rental agencies and the airlines lost money because many tourists went to places other then Minnesota. Finally the governor gave in. He could not take all of the punishment that the shutdown was placing on the state and its citizens. He accepted a plan from the borrow and spend congress which balanced the budget on a combination of cuts and borrowing. He did manage to get some of the awful parts of the Republican budget expunged. So the everything is now getting back to normal but at some point in the future people will need to realize that all of the great things in life that we take for granted every day are not free and the way that we pay for all of the good stuff that the government and society grant us is through our taxes.
9 comments:
And now we're dealing with the same idiocy in DC! Pretty discouraging! Great post for the day!
Sylvia
You have a very blue sky over there. Great post!
I couldn’t have said it any better. This county is in one big mess. All Congress does is argue and say ugly things about the opposing side. There seems to be no sense of decency anywhere whether it be local, state, or national government. At least we of the picture taking blogging world have each others’ photos to brighten our days. Your shot of the state building with its dome is lovely..and the blue sky in the background is so pretty.Genie
well we have people and then there are politicians !! :)
Pheno
Government! The opposition in Australia is running a scare campaign about a new carbon tax - there idea is to take public money and give it to big polluters to promise to stop polluting! I think there may be a problem there in who creates the public money in the first place!
Stewart M - Australia
It is very true that people are going to need to understand that the things we once had are no longer going to be there. I never thought I would see that day in my lifetime but it is here more or less.
Beautiful shots.
Nice shot on the building though
An excellent post. Unfortunately all too many people do not realise that to enjoy the privileges and benefits of a society, we also have the responsibilities of contributing to the expenses and behaving in a civilised manner.
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