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Posts Tagged ‘Mark Dayton’
October 11th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
New Cato Study Shows Tea Party Governors Delivering on Promises
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The Cato Institute came out this week with its Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors and the results are very good for Tea Partiers. The nation’s top five chief executives in terms of fiscal stewardship are virtually all proud limited government advocates who have followed through on their promises of reining in government:

1 (tie) — Sam Brownback (R-Kansas); Rick Scott (R-Florida)

3 (tie) — Paul LePage (R-Maine); Tom Corbett (R-Pennsylvania)

5 (3-way tie) — Bobby Jindal (R-Louisiana); Jack Dalrymple (R-North Dakota); John Lynch (D-New Hampshire)

Lynch deserves some credit for being the sole Democrat to crack the top of the list, but not nearly as much as the Republicans who swept to huge majorities in the Granite State’s legislature and forced the governor to abide by New Hampshire’s “live free or die” ethos.

And the nation’s worst fiscal leaders? Is it any surprise that it’s a cadre of blue state liberals?:

46. Christine Gregoire (D-Washington)

47. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii)

48. Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota)

49. Dan Malloy (D-Connecticut)

50, Pat Quinn (D-Illinois)

The full report is here.

July 6th, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Minnesota Governor Shuts Down the State to Raise Taxes

Annette Meeks, CEO of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, offers this damning editorial of Democratic Governor Mark Dayton’s decision to shut down the state’s government rather than sign a balanced budget without tax increases.

Among the bevy of withering arguments against Dayton’s action, Meeks points out that the budget passed by the legislature actually increased state spending by 6 percent while filling a $5 billion deficit.  The problem for Dayton: no soak-the-rich “millionaires’ tax.”

Like President Barack Obama with the nation’s debt ceiling, Governor Dayton is playing a dangerous game for the sake of fiscal discrimination.  Moreover, Dayton is unwilling to consider the state equivalent of a continuing budget resolution.

I’ll give Meeks the last word:

Last week, Republican legislative leaders, in a desperate move to stave off closing the government, proposed a “lights on” budget resolution that would have allowed services to continue while negotiations continued. In a crass, cynical move, Dayton rejected this good-natured offer.

We are here for one reason — Dayton. He insists upon inflicting as much pain as possible for state residents and government employees. And he is doing this so that the Legislature will bend to his will and raise income taxes, launching Minnesota into the stratosphere of high income taxes.

There are certain principles worth fighting for. Preserving a sound economic future for our state is one of those things.