Hi Friends, 

Here is a quick video update from the Capitol.  

Overall Budget Agreement 

We are wrapping up the budget planning session and earlier this week we reached a budget agreement among the House, Senate and Governors office. Watch the video below as I break down the historic budget agreement that includes a $5 billion reduction in spending and reduces nearly half the projected deficit!  

I highlight some key wins, like protecting transportation and education services for nonpublic school students, halting new taxpayer-funded benefits for undocumented adults, and redirecting funds from underused transit programs to roads, bridges, and bus service Minnesotans actually use.

Funding Education and Ending the Northern Lights Express

The house finally passed our Education Budget bills last night. A sticking point was that it sunsets an expensive, newly-created unemployment insurance for temporary school workers (paying them for summer breaks). The sunsetting of this new program was necessary because many school districts are now facing huge additional costs for unemployment benefits for workers that are hired for just the school year. The last legislature, under one party control, mandated the program but didn’t fully fund it, and that has led to teacher layoffs, fewer electives, and staff shortages. 

We now pay for the unemployment benefits provision by using cash sitting around to, maybe someday, fund for a train to Duluth called Northern Lights Express (NLX). It’s highly unlikely we receive federal funding. I spoke on the amendment, thankful that my colleagues finally seemed to realize we are facing a $6 billion deficit because of reckless new spending and programs.   

That bill effectively ends the NLX project, something I’ve long questioned. That’s $77 million we’re putting toward real needs instead of a train few would use, and would cost taxpayers a lot to operate. Smart budgeting. Right priorities.

Watch my Floor speech here.

More to come as session wraps up before, hopefully, a very short special session. It’s hard to operate with an exact tie of 67 House members, especially when half of the members started 3 weeks late (with pay).

Thanks for your support and for reading. I’ll return when we wrap up the bills.