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Pawlenty has and will continue to talk about how “X” program has increased in size under his term as Governor. However, in Pawlenty’s looking-glass world, inflation apparently exists only on “one side of the ledger”. Real people have to deal with inflation both in their income and in their expenses. Larry Pogemiller, DFL - Minneapolis gives us the “real” bottom line in the Strib: (emphasis added)

After adjusting for inflation the implicit price deflator for state and local government purchases, which is a better measurement for state and local governments, per capita state general fund expenditures are projected to decline by 7.1 percent from 2003 to the end of the current fiscal year.

What has been the impact of this decline in state spending? Real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) per pupil state aid for Minnesota schools has declined by 8.6 percent, which in turn resulted in increases in school property taxes and decline in real per pupil school revenues.

Pawlenty, now in re-election mode, has recently made remarks that he would like to see a shift in the balance between state and local contributions to education return to historical levels. Like Bush in my previous post, Pawlenty must open himself to the reality of the current state of affairs before a solution can be proposed.

Pogemiller also debunks the arguments against Growth & Justice.

Wigley and Cooper seem astonished that the Growth & Justice coalition called for high-income households to pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as low- and moderate-income households. On average, a Minnesota family with a household income of $50,000 or even $150,000 pays 12 percent of its income in state and local taxes. Is it unreasonable to expect the same tax effort from families with household incomes of $500,000 to $1 million, who now pay from 9 to 10 percent?

The above issues are also playing out on the national level - more tomorrow.

[EDITED: for clarity and bad HTML]