Legislative Update

This week Governor Walz along with Speaker Hortman and Senate President Champion unveiled their budget targets that include a 17.9 billion dollar net increase over the previous budget. This means the state would spend nearly $72 billion in the next two-year budget cycle. This will spend through the entire surplus and then some. Unfortunately, this aggressive budget doesn't even address some of the biggest issues our state is facing right now. Important infrastructure like roads and bridges is hardly addressed in this framework while there are massive increases for their special interests.

All committees have been quite busy this week as we approach the second and third deadlines. These are the points when all of our policy and finance bills that are going to get passed this year need to be through the committee process and headed to the house floor. The release of the budget targets will now require the narrowing of bills that will be included in the final package of bills from each committee. I look forward to continuing the work in committee and getting some important policy passed for Minnesota.

National Agriculture Day was Tuesday, and I had the opportunity to speak with a number of farmers and those in the ag industry. Many members of Minnesota Farm Bureau as well as a number of wheat and soybean growers stopped by my office to discuss some of their priority issues they have for this session. Agriculture makes up a significant portion of our state's economy and we should be supporting them at the capitol as much as they support all of Minnesota.