Minnesota Republicans decry legislative session as partisan, seek to win back House

Minnesota Republicans have their sights set on winning back the state House in next year's election after the DFL-controlled Legislature enacted a sweeping agenda that spent much of the state's $17.5 billion surplus.

Reflecting on the legislative session Tuesday, Republican leaders said their 2024 campaign message practically writes itself: Democrats spent most of the surplus, raised taxes by $1 billion over the next two years and broke campaign promises to eliminate the tax on Social Security income and send Minnesotans large rebate checks.

"The fact that we raised taxes … at a time when we walked in with a $17 billion surplus, I think that is the most egregious because that means that Minnesota lawmakers were greedy," said House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring. "A lot of Minnesotans are going to be disappointed when the dust settles and they realize that."

Demuth said Tuesday that she plans to visit "all parts of the state" this year to talk to voters about it. All 134 House seats are on the ballot in 2024, while the state Senate won't be up for election for another three years.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, countered that Democrats enacted policies that most Minnesotans favor.

"Paid family and medical leave, gun violence prevention, protecting reproductive freedom, taking climate action. Those things are off-the-charts good in polling for both Democrats and Republicans," Hortman said.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which seeks to elect GOP state legislators across the country, has listed Minnesota among its state legislative targets.

Minnesota Republican Party chair David Hann said in an interview that he doesn't think Democrats would have won control of the Legislature last year if they campaigned on what they actually ended up doing, which was, "We're going to spend every dollar of the surplus and not give any of it back except a token."

Democrats have hailed their $3 billion tax bill as the "largest tax cut in state history." It gives one-time rebates to some Minnesotans, exempts more people from the Social Security tax and creates a new child tax credit.

Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic, DFL-Minneapolis, said Democrats focused on "lifting up" families and people who are struggling. That's why they also poured billions more into schools and created a statewide paid family and medical leave program, she said.

But the tax bill also includes several tax increases, and Democrats' transportation funding bill raises the gas tax and the metro-area sales tax and creates a 50-cent fee on deliveries over $100.

"It's disingenuous to say it was the biggest tax cut ever. It was a wealth transfer to certain groups," said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks.

In a Sunday news conference, DFL Gov. Tim Walz rejected the idea that Democrats "overreached."

"It's not an overreach to let women make their own health care decisions. It's not an overreach to make sure our children eat. It's not an overreach to deal with climate change. It's not an overreach to fix the roads," Walz said, nodding to bills that codified reproductive rights into state law and made school meals free for all students, among other things.

Hann was sharp in his critique of the DFL, saying Democrats won control of state government by a narrow margin and then "catered to the most extreme left-wing section of their party and passed all kinds of things that are going to be devastating to the economy."

Businesses expressed concerns about economic effects throughout the session.

Uber and Lyft threatened to stop serving parts of the state over a bill that would give ride-share drivers pay raises and job protection. And Mayo Clinic briefly threatened to pull back on billion-dollar investments in Minnesota over a bill that sought to regulate nurse staffing levels.

Hann decried the growth in state spending over the next two years — Democrats increased the budget from about $52 billion to nearly $72 billion — and criticized Walz for not fighting harder to return more of the surplus to taxpayers.

He noted that last June, when the budget surplus was smaller, Walz proposed $1,000 rebate checks for individuals and $2,000 for families.

The tax bill passed by the Legislature included a scaled-back version of the rebate checks, offering $260 tax credits to single Minnesotans who make up to $75,000 a year and $520 to married joint filers who make up to $150,000.

Families who meet the income threshold will also be eligible for an additional $260 per child, up to three children, for a total of $1,300.

Republicans struck a deal with Democrats on Saturday, pledging their support for an infrastructure-borrowing bill in exchange for more nursing home funding. Johnson said Republicans were given the choice of more nursing home funding or slightly larger rebate checks.

"To us, it really mattered that we took care of our nursing homes," Johnson said. "If Republicans would have been control in the Senate … you would've seen those bigger checks."

Demuth said voters should think hard about whether they want Minnesota to continue under single-party control or return to divided government.

"Looking at what the consequences are this year with raising taxes when we had a surplus, I can only imagine it's going to be more of the same" if the DFL trifecta continues, Demuth said.

Former GOP Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, now a lobbyist, said she thinks legislative Republicans struggled to adjust to being in the minority with two new caucus leaders and an inability to set the agenda.

Koch said GOP legislators may have erred by focusing mostly on nursing home funding and eliminating the Social Security tax. Koch would have focused on bigger rebate checks.

"They're going to say they fought for Social Security and they fought for nursing homes, but I think that is a certain segment of the population," Koch said. "Sure, but you didn't do anything about young families, you didn't do anything around schools. I would have had a more unified message."

Staff writers Briana Bierschbach and Jessie Van Berkel contributed to this report.