In what he said was "the spirit of compromise," Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Monday put out his own alternative to a $1 billion tax increase he's vetoed that would balance the state's budget and close out the session.
But there are no tax increases in Pawlenty's plan. Instead, he offers to cut in half his own proposal to borrow against future state revenues, drain the state's reserve and fill in the gap with the accounting shift proposed by the DFL-led House.
"The proposals noted above would generate $1 billion, which is the level of funding included in the vetoed tax bill," Pawlenty wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, and House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis.
House and Senate DFLers had joined forces on Friday to pass a $1 billion tax bill that would have raised taxes on the wealthy, on alcohol and on credit companies that charged excessive rates. Pawlenty, a Republican, vetoed the bill within hours.
Billions of dollars in spending for the next two years remain in dispute. Pawlenty and majority Democrats haven't reached a broad-ranging budget deal in the face of a mammoth deficit. The $4.6 billion shortfall -- an amount that would be larger without Minnesota-bound federal stimulus money -- is about 13 percent of the total budget.
Democrats and many Republicans are opposed to Pawlenty's approach of borrowing against future state revenue to generate almost $1 billion. It's possible a scaled-back version could be part of a final agreement.
House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, said an override attempt on the tax-for-spending trade-off bill wouldn't happen until later in the week, if that vote occurs at all.
"It's going to be very apparent to people very quickly that what the governor did on Saturday is he vetoed hope," she said. "He vetoed hope for our schools. He vetoed hope for our hospitals. And he vetoed hope for nursing homes around the state."