WILLMAR — While things were off to a slow start at the federal legislative level, things were moving rapidly for the state legislature — and Senator Andrew Lang, R-Olivia, and Representative Dave Baker, R-Willmar, want to pump the brakes.
Deputy Chief of Staff Nick Lunneborg for United States Congresswoman Michelle Fishbach, R-Paynesville, Lang and Baker were in Willmar Saturday morning during a legislative update breakfast hosted by Kandiyohi County Farm Bureau, Willmar Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce Agri-business Committee and Kandiyohi County and City of Willmar Economic Development Commission Agriculture and Renewable Energy Committee.
“From a federal standpoint, we got off to a bit of a slow start, but we’re off and running,” Lunneborg said, noting committees are all rostered and have budgets and they are marking up bills in order to meet a lot of deadlines that are looming.
“I wish we got off to a slow start, because that’s not what’s been happening in St. Paul,” Lang said. “We’re kind of along for a bumpy ride this year.”
“We’re just seeing things move very, very quickly,” Baker said. “Both the Senate and the House are full of a lot of brand new people that really don’t know how this process works, and we’re trying to explain to them — this is unusual, we don’t normally go this fast.”
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One of the bills that has passed that both Baker and Lang took issue with was the Driver’s Licenses for All bill. Admittedly, Baker has been supportive of the concept in the past and Lang has been “wishy washy” about it, but neither agree with how the bill that was passed is written or what it provides.
“This bill is a lot less to do with driver’s licenses than it seems to with other things,” Lang said, noting he sees it as a pathway to voting. “It allows a pathway to fraud in Minnesota licenses top to bottom.”
One of the issues he had with the bill is that the background check in the bill is weak, allowing the people behind the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles to complete the background checks and verify the validity of formal birth certificates.
“This is the state government saying that that idea is good enough to do that in kind of open defiance of the federal government and everything that we did with homeland security after Sept. 11, 2001,” Lang commented, noting the bill was shredded in committee and still passed without a single amendment.
While supportive of the concept, Baker’s issue with the bill is that the driver’s license would look the same for undocumented citizens as it does for everyone else.
“It should not look the same as everybody else's, it should look different. It should say not for voting on the front of it,” Baker said. “But I did want them to drive legally, I do want them to get insurance … but the way they wrote it this year wasn’t anything like that, because they didn’t care what some of us on the negotiating teams before were working on.”
Another bill both Lang and Baker took issue with was the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill, which mandates 12 weeks of paid family leave and 12 weeks of paid medical leave for employees.
“That employee can take that 24 weeks for pretty much an endless list of reasons,” Lang said. “The problem with that isn’t the idea, it’s that it is mandatory for every business, regardless of size.”
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Noting there were a lot of businesses like his that would support something reasonable with paid family leave that isn’t a mandate for the state of Minnesota, Baker said, “Provide us a product with an insurance company that we have a choice — we can use these short term disabilities that employers could choose to do this and you can pick your packages — six weeks off for a new baby, eight weeks, 10 weeks — it’s up to the employer and maybe the employees.”
He added that “one size doesn’t fit all” and that it isn’t because he doesn’t like families, but he doesn’t think the government should be involved in how businesses provide benefits, such as pay, pensions, and family leave for their employees.
Another bill introduced this week would require every business, school and municipality to have a new retirement plan, which Lang stated would be another mandate upon businesses. He also noted that many of the bills do not have a fiscal breakdown attached for how much it will cost to implement.
“These are billion dollar bills, two billion dollar bills, that are being taxed on the state of Minnesota,” he said. “But we don’t know — that’s just us guessing and rough, back-of-the-napkin math to try to figure out what it’s going to cost as far as additional taxes. Probably in the $2 to $3 billion range for that one alone.”
Strong budget
“We have more money than we know what to do with, and that’s a danger,” Baker said, noting the budget is strong with a $17.5 billion dollar surplus. “When you get groups like us there and others, we do like to spend money — all of us, we like to spend money. But I am freaking out about the future legislators that will be there after we’re gone, and the tails and the future spending that might be happening this year.”
If restraint is not used and legislators do not understand that the surplus is one-time money that should not be used to fund ongoing programs, Baker said his fear is that future legislatures will have to make tough decisions about severe cuts or major tax increases.
Noting that the $17.5 billion surplus is about 30% of the previous budget that is “extra tax that we had the state pull from you,” Lang said the new budget released by Governor Tim Walz shows a 25% increase in spending.
He said his concern lies with what that will look like in five years due to not being able to keep up with increases that come along with the cost of living allowances and other built-in increases, but there was a bill passed that he did not vote for that “baked” inflation into every piece of the state budget.
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“I don’t know how that will look for the state government. I don’t know how the citizens of the state of Minnesota could just accept an 11% increase in their taxes if that’s what inflation does,” Lang said.
Lang also brought up the bill that requires Minnesota to be carbon-free by 2040 and how some cooperatives he has talked to don’t know how it can be done without major increases in electricity rates, claiming electric bills could increase by $200 for residential and $400 for business.
2023 Farm Bill
One of the deadlines looming for the federal government is for the Farm Bill, which will expire in six months if not extended.
Lunneborg noted that the Congressional Budget Office dictates how much can be spent on a bill. With the most recent estimates, the mandatory side of the Farm Bill, particularly the SNAP program, “has just gone off the rails in terms of how much is being spent in that program relative to the rest of the Farm Bill — it makes up more than 80%,” he said. “What that means is that that is effectively a crutch on the rest of the Farm Bill programs and how much you can spend in the 2023 Farm Bill for things like Title I, crop insurance, rural development program.”
He noted the growth in the SNAP program is largely due to the Biden Administration’s Thrifty Food Plan.
“There’s some significant challenges with addressing that and it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of pulling together from both sides of the aisle to try and make the improvements we need to Farm Bill programs, but also bring together the coalition that gets you 218 votes in the House and 60 in the Senate,” Lunneborg added.
If the legislature needs a little more time on the 2023 Farm Bill, the bill passed in 2018 will be extended, which he stated wouldn’t be the worst outcome.
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Fishbach's biggest concerns with the Farm Bill are protecting crop insurance, strengthening the risk/benefit regime for farmers and ranchers and investing in rural communities, according to Lunneborg.
“We want to make sure that we are investing in the infrastructure that makes strong rural communities and schools and businesses - that’s capital investment, that’s hospitals, things like that,” he said.
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