With fewer than five days remaining in the legislative session, lawmakers at the Minnesota Capitol are finding themselves stuck in limbo on a number of budget bills, which they say are being held up until their leadership and Gov. Tim Walz reach a global budget agreement.
If lawmakers can’t reach an agreement by midnight on Monday, May 19, they’ll have to complete their work upon the governor’s call of a special session. The legislature is constitutionally mandated to pass a budget by July 1.
Leaders in the House, Senate and in the governor’s office have been meeting for several days. They continued that on Wednesday.
And while Republican legislative leaders have remained steadfast in their vow not to agree on a budget that includes tax increases, they haven’t signaled belief that a special session is inevitable, just yet. Walz has hinted a special session may be necessary.
“We’re going back in (to the governor’s office) for more conversations,” House Speaker Lisa Demuth responded when asked by media Wednesday whether a deal can be reached in time to stave off a special session.
Sen. Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, said “we are making progress, and it’s slow, but there is a real will to get this done.” When pressed, Murphy acknowledged that a special session is “very, very likely, if not inevitable.”
Those negotiations followed a relatively unproductive floor session in the House on Tuesday, where the only issue taken up for debate was a resolution to replace a statue of Henry Rice in Washington, D.C. with one of Hubert H. Humphrey.
Walz sales tax expansion not in House tax bill—at the moment
A tax bill that had been primed for a House floor vote was tabled as leaders from parties in both chambers continue to negotiate what the state’s bottom line will look like for the next two years. One major provision not currently in the bill is a sales tax base expansion that Walz pitched hard in January, but it has come under heavy criticism at the Capitol.
“Given the nature of the legislative tie, the House Tax bill is likely as good as it gets. But that doesn’t mean it’s close to good enough,” said Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, who serve as co-chair of the House Taxes Committee. “While Trump and federal Republicans are getting rich off of opulent tax cuts for the super wealthy and insider trading, we are stuck tightening our belt and debating devastating cuts to critical services. When we head to conference committee, I am committed to crafting a bill that meets the true needs of our state.”
But Gomez’s counterpart, Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, offered a different perspective last week as Republicans and Democrats were forced to find common ground in a chamber tied at 67 representatives a piece.
“We were charged with putting a bill together that would cut $80 million, and we did that,” said Davids, who co-chairs the House Taxes Committee. “Unless I’m missing something, local government aid to cities is intact. County program aid is intact. I think this bill really protects those entities that do so much for so many people.”
Rank and file Democrats, Republicans weigh in
While leadership on both sides of the political aisle have remained cautiously optimistic that an agreement can be reached and a budget finalized—either by midnight on Monday, or during a short special session—several of their rank-and-file colleagues haven’t been so charitable in voicing their frustrations.
Newly-elected Rep. David Gottfried, DFL-Shoreview, took to Facebook following the floor session on Tuesday and blamed Republicans for the budget negotiation “hold up.”
“Republicans continue to try to put in terrible, cruel policy into budget bills,” Gottfried said. “The things they want to do, they want to take away unemployment insurance for certain people, they want to take away healthcare, they want to roll back consumer and environmental protections. The list goes on and on of all the truly terrible things they want to do and they are trying to insert that into budget bills when our one mandate is to fund the government.”
Rep. Elliott Engen, R-White Bear Township, said DFLers in the House who boycotted the beginning of the legislative session are now threatening a shutdown unless Republicans agree to continue to provide healthcare for illegal immigrants.
“Democrats WANT a government shutdown-unless we fund free healthcare for illegal immigrants and impose an $8 Billion tax increase on families,” Engen said in a social media post on Tuesday. “Republicans came here expecting reasonable solutions. Democrats showed up a month late, taking full pay, and now put our state at risk of a shutdown over insane policy.”
GOP senators say they won’t support tax bill with increases
In the Senate this week, where the DFL holds a one-seat advantage over Republicans, the Senate Taxes Committee passed its bill in its last stop before hitting the chamber floor, but did so on party lines.
Sen. Bill Weber, R-Luverne, criticized his DFL colleagues over tax increases included in the Senate version, which he said stemmed from a “drunken spending spree” by the DFL “trifecta” in 2023.
“As we look back at what has happened in this legislature for the previous two years and this year, what have we accomplished?” Weber said last week. “We took an $18 billion surplus and added $10 billion more of additional taxes and fees, and today we stand on the precipice of a $6 billion deficit. I don’t know that’s something to be proud of.”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
