David Lloyd George, the eventual British prime minister during World War I, once remarked that in the Great War the British military leadership maintained three sets of casualty figures: one to fool the public, one to fool the government, and one to fool themselves.
Sadly, Minnesota’s current political leaders, led by an extreme-liberal DFL trifecta, appear to be taking the same approach.
Whether on the economy, crime, education, or other issues, the state’s far-left leaders have spent their time telling Minnesotans, and perhaps convincing themselves, that Minnesota has become a utopia driven by successful liberal policies. The facts are radically and sadly different, though. And Minnesotans deserve the truth.
Let’s start with crime. We’re all familiar with the massive increases in crime in Minnesota in 2020 and 2021. Many DFL leaders have pointed to reductions since then, and although there have indeed been modest reductions in some types of crime, murders in Minneapolis remain 50% higher than pre-2020 levels, and St. Paul has seen murders nearly double from their count before the onset of the decade. Statewide, 2023 saw 179 murders: again, a more than 50% increase relative to 2019. Further, one must ask, in an era in which we have a fraction of the police officers we need, whether some categories of crime are not being reported by a public that knows the police, particularly in Minneapolis, do not have the resources to deal with runaway crime. Minnesota continues to deal with crime rates that are among the worst in its history.
Moving to the economy, Minnesota is falling behind. Government has grown dramatically since 2010, increasing state spending by nearly 130% while the economy has grown by just 22%. In 2023, Minnesota’s GDP growth was 43rd in the country, and although Minnesotans have historically enjoyed a substantially higher GDP per capita than the U.S. average, that advantage evaporated over the past six years. Minnesota has historically been a state where job growth, wage growth, and economic growth have been stellar. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
On education, Minnesota has to acknowledge that, despite countless exemplary teachers throughout our state, the government education system, including the immense bureaucracies and the money being spent outside of classrooms, needs change. Test scores have plummeted. In 2013 (a good year to start a comparison since the current testing regime was implemented then), statewide reading proficiency was 57.8% and math proficiency was 61.2%. In 2023, those numbers fell to 49.7% and 45.3% respectively. Some might blame the COVID-19 pandemic, but the decline began before that. Math proficiency in 2019 declined to 54.9%, for example. The cause wasn’t a lack of funding, either, as there have been substantial inflation-adjusted increases in per-capita spending. Minnesota kids simply deserve an education system that is better than what state leadership is delivering.
And then there is, of course, the historic fraud plaguing our state government. Each week seems to bring a new disclosure of fraud. From the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which $250 million meant for needy kids was stolen, to the recently disclosed $200 million allegedly stolen in connection with frontline-worker bonuses to the disclosure of investigations into Medicaid fraud in autism-services programs, Minnesota’s government has never seen fraud on this scale. One commentator totaled this at approximately $500 million, enough to give every police officer in the state a $50,000 bonus or an extra $1.5 million to every school district statewide.
What makes matters worse is that many in our state government, including our attorney general and legislative leadership, have facilitated such fraud by continuing to deliver state contracts to fraudulent enterprises or by refusing to investigate them seriously.
Minnesota is plainly going in the wrong direction, and no cheerleading, cherry-picked statistics, or spin by politicians can change that.
We simply need different policies. Minnesota is the fourth-highest-taxed state in the nation, and we should reduce our taxes and grow jobs, wages, and our economy. Minnesota leadership has spent years villainizing cops and excusing the conduct of violent criminals. Instead, we should hold criminals accountable and invest in our police forces. We should embrace serious education reform to ensure every child gets the education he or she deserves. All these things are possible, but they require we move away from the failed hard-left policies the state has embraced in recent years.
Change in Minnesota requires a turn away from the liberal politicians who have brought the state to this point — and for those who remain to stop lying to the public and themselves and face the unpleasant facts about the direction we’re heading.
There is hope for Minnesota, but it begins with honesty.
Jim Schultz is president of the Minnesota Private Business Council (growthmn.com) and was the 2022 Republican nominee for Minnesota attorney general. This article first appeared in the Duluth News Tribune.
Jim Schultz
Jim Schultz is the President of the Minnesota Private Business Council and was the 2022 Republican nominee for Attorney General.
