Friday night's political roundtable of former legislators was really a story of three career politicians talking typical St. Paul-speak vs. Tom Emmer. Rep. Emmer was great in shooting down the nonsense coming from Ember Reichgott-Junge, John Tuma and Jeremy Kalin.
One after another, Tuma, Kalin and Reichgott-Junge talked about the importance of compromise. Time after time, Tom Emmer kept directing the conversation back to where it should be, meaning he kept questioning whether Minnesota needs to spend $34-35 billion to properly fund Minnesota's priorities.
Part of the reason why Rep. Emmer kept looking like the giant in the room was because he kept questioning why government does the things it does. He questioned whether government had gotten sloppy by doing the same things the same way year after year after year.
Finally, after getting clubbed over the head with Rep. Emmer's common sense questions, Rep. Kalin finally admitted that the people back in his former district worried that government wasn't working. That matters with the current budget talks more than you'd think.
If you talked with 100 people picked randomly on the street and you told them that one political party had passed a bunch of bills that would change St. Paul's status quo mindset. Suppose you told this same group of people that, if this legislation had gotten signed into law, government would be required to justify every penny that they spend once every four years. What's the likelihood that at least 90 of thse 100 people would ask why they don't have to justify every penny they spend each budget cycle.
Let's take a different group of 100 people and told them that there are agencies and commissions that the legislature doesn't know how they got created or what their purpose is. Then tell them that another piece of legislation would establish a commission that determines if the agency or department was doing its job or, if it was doing their job, whether that task was still needed.
Again, I'd bet that at least 90 of this second group of people would say that that should be enacted ASAP.
Imagine how furious people would be if they found out that Gov. Dayton had vetoed that specific bill when he vetoed the 9 spending bills. Guess what? Gov. Dayton did veto that legislation (HF2) when he vetoed the omnibus spending bills.
On each issue, career politicians Tuma, Kalin and Reichgott-Junge didn't talk about how to use the taxpayers' money wisely. They didn't talk about why Minnesota career politicians don't even think in those terms. Again, Rep. Emmer got it that the respectful thing to do was to ignore conventional thinking and do what's right, not what's tradition.
Imagine randomly picking another group of 100 people, then telling them that their governor refused to stand up to the public employee unions by signing legislation that used retirements the next 4 years to trim Minnesota's government by 15 percent. Tell them that Gov. Dayton vetoed Rep. Downey's '15 by 15' legislation and see how they react. I'll bet that they agree with Tom Emmer most of the time.
I'd further bet that the randomly picked group of 100 wouldn't be thrilled to know that Gov. Dayton wouldn't sign those reforms because he was beholden to the DFL's special interest allies. That the randomly picked group of 100 wouldn't be thrilled to know that the DFL's special interest allies are the tail that wags the dog.
If you throw in the fact that a Gov. Emmer would've signed those eminently justifiable reforms, you might trigger a political riot against the DFL.
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