Lawmakers play blame game as session comes to end without major budget bills

Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, threw the first stone on Monday morning, telling reporters that the Legislature wasn’t close to finishing its work on the last day of the legislative session because House Republicans were demanding ever more concessions, in violation of a global agreement reached last week.

“My mouth is full of cuss words right now,” Murphy said.

House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, blamed House Democrats, who refused to show up for the first few weeks of session so Republicans couldn’t use their temporary, 1-vote advantage to block a Democrat from being seated in a hotly contested election.

“Waiting 23 days of a stall out was not helpful,” Demuth said.

The blame game was in full force on Monday as it became apparent that lawmakers might not even stay at the Capitol until midnight, an unofficial tradition on the constitutionally mandated last day of the session, because there’d be no budget bills ready to debate.

“I think we’ll run out of things to do this evening,” said House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park.

The Legislature has only passed seven, mostly noncontroversial bills out of some 20 bills in process, with the biggest pieces of legislation still outstanding, including the budgets for education, taxes, and health and human services.

There haven’t even been legislators assigned to hammer out agreements between the House and Senate in what are known as conference committees — a blend of representatives and senators of both parties — on education finance and taxes. Education alone comprises roughly 40% of the general fund budget.

Lawmakers must pass a budget by June 30, or the government shuts down.

Walz and lawmakers hope they can keep working on compromises on the most contentious issues and get to final deals, which would set the parameters for a quick special session, ideally before the Memorial Day holiday. Only Gov. Tim Walz can call a special session, but only lawmakers can adjourn once they’re in a special session.

While the governor and legislative leaders announced a global budget agreement last week, what exactly it entailed now seems to be up for debate. The governor and legislative leaders only released a single page with budget targets for state agencies, but no written record of their agreements on policy.

Leaders said paid family leave would remain unchanged except for a 0.1% reduction in the cap on payroll taxes. Now, deeper cuts are back on the table.

“There is bipartisan desire to make additional changes to paid family medical leave before it even rolls out. That was not part of the global agreement,” Demuth said, noting support from DFL Sen. Judy Seeberger for cuts to the program set to launch next year.

Hortman said on Monday that the agreement included no additional changes to paid family leave and expects Demuth “to honor her word.”

Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, reiterated to reporters that he never signed the global budget agreement on behalf of his caucus.

“We’re not subject or held to that agreement,” Johnson said. “We are going to fight to the very end.”

Progressive Democrats seemed to have backed down from threatening to hold up budget bills over rolling back access to MinnesotaCare for undocumented immigrant adults, which was part of the global agreement.

Rep. Cedrick Frazier, DFL-New Hope, said on Saturday that the People of Color and Indigenous Caucus and their allies don’t plan to shut down government over that bill.

With so much left to do and the Legislature no longer officially in session as of midnight, the negotiations will happen mostly outside of the public’s eye in “working groups.”

Asked if the public would be able to watch the working groups debate the state’s next two year budget, Murphy said she was “very interested” in them working in public if she could get agreement from the other body.