Latest news with #budgetdeal
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Beer shortages, dirty parks: What happens without a Minnesota budget deal?
The Brief Minnesota is now one month away from its first government shutdown since 2011. For 20 days that July, the state laid off 19,000 workers. State parks and rest areas didn't get cleaned. Horse tracks couldn't operate because the Minnesota Racing Commission was closed. And liquor stores, restaurants, and bars started to run out of beer because the DPS employees who renewed alcohol licenses were laid off. Leaders are optimistic they'll avoid a shutdown in 2025. They're expecting a special session as soon as next week. But some high hurdles still need to be jumped for that to happen. ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - There was no obvious movement on Friday towards a complete budget deal at the Minnesota Capitol, but legislative leaders say they're confident a special session should come next week. They have one month to avoid the first government shutdown since 2011. What's shaking? A few privately arranged agreements popped up on the legislature's website Friday, leaving just three omnibus budget bills to sew up. But there are still some big hurdles to jump and legislators who were at the Capitol for the last shutdown are hearing some echoes of 2011. Like a semi overturned in the Lowry Hill tunnel blocking traffic, cutting MN Care insurance for undocumented adults while keeping it for kids could block the road to a budget."If that is to pass, it's going to have to pass separately," said Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul). "That has not been a part of the discussion in the rooms," said her House counterpart, Speaker Lisa Demuth (R-Cold Spring). Maybe we have For now, the blockage doesn't seem as immovable as it was in 2011 when a GOP majority in the House and Senate couldn't convince DFL Gov. Mark Dayton to sign off on a budget. Then-Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch says this year sometimes feels the same, but she sees differences. "They have more like pots of trouble where we had like the one big thing," Koch said. Parks, horses, beer During a 20-day government shutdown in 2011, the state had to lay off 19,000 state workers, forcing closures at state parks and rest areas, and stressing out a lot of people. "I didn't know if it was going to last two hours, two days, two months, two weeks," state worker Brice Wickstrom told FOX 9 after the 2011 shutdown ended on July 21. Horse tracks couldn't operate because the state racing commission was shut down, so Canterbury Park lost nearly $3 million. That won't happen this year because a new law allows the commission to continue working with outside funding. But a beer shortage could once again ail liquor stores, bars and restaurants. "They're just disgusted," Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association rep Tony Chesak told FOX 9 about those businesses in 2011. "They're upset to the point where they're just trying to stay in business."State employees responsible for renewing alcohol licenses could be out during a shutdown. Koch believes that was a major motivating factor convincing Gov. Dayton to agree to Republican terms and end the shutdown. She hoped it would be a political winner. "We're going to run on this budget," she told FOX 9 in 2011. "We're going to talk about closing $5 billion forecast deficit without raising taxes. That's a big thing." The GOP lost both the House and the Senate in the next election, but budget forecasts have stayed sunnier. "Since then, we've never had a deficit," Koch said Friday. Until now, that is. The latest forecast predicted nearly a $6 billion deficit by 2029, which is one of many reasons this year's negotiations have been so difficult.
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Bond vigilantes will force Trump into line
He conceded ground on tariffs after the markets plunged back in April. And he backed down on threats to fire Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, after bond investors took fright. If there is one thing we know for certain about Donald Trump it is this: when it comes to the crunch, he will give in to pressure from Wall Street. Right now, the markets face an even bigger task. Investors and the bond vigilantes will have to force Trump to become the first president since Bill Clinton to balance the books. It won't come to him naturally, and the fiscal mess is hardly his fault. But someone has to get the US deficit under control, which means the president having to change direction. Trump may have named the budget deal that is likely to be agreed by both houses of Congress by the end of the month the 'one big, beautiful bill'. The trouble is, investors do not see it that way. It extends his tax cuts from his first term, and adds in some extra ones as well, such as tax breaks on tips and overtime, which, while they may incentivise longer working hours over the medium term, will cost a lot of money in year one. Overall the budget deal will add an estimated $4 trillion (£3 trillion) to the US national debt over the next decade. The people who will have to pay for all that spending don't like the look of it. After a poorly received auction on Thursday, the yield on 30-year Treasury bills hit 5.14pc, only a whisker away from the 5.18pc last seen way back in 2007. That pushes the cost of American government debt close to a two-decade high. The only difference between then and now is that the country owes far more money. The national debt was $9 trillion then, and it is $34 trillion now. Every extra percentage point that has to be paid in interest on all that is very painful. In fairness, Trump is not really to blame for the mess. Joe Biden's wild spending on green and industrial subsidies pushed the deficit up to unprecedented levels, adding $8.4 trillion to the debt pile during his four years in the White House. And Trump has set Elon Musk's department of government efficiency, or Doge, to work on rooting out waste, while also cutting back on the massively expensive green subsidies, even though the tax credits they offered makes them very hard to cancel. But it is nothing like enough. Efficiency drives never yield anything like as much in savings as expected, and even the ruthless Musk, who knows a little about cost-cutting, is unlikely to get anything close to the $1 trillion or more of reductions he has targeted (especially now that he has grown bored with the whole project and slunk off back to running Tesla). With the budget as it stands, the deficit this year may well reach an extraordinary 7pc of GDP, and that is without any major crisis to deal with, and under an administration that is at least making some attempts to control spending. It is hardly a surprise that bond investors are growing more and more nervous. The task now will be for the markets to force Trump to accept the inevitable. He will have to be the president who finally starts to bring spending under control. The last person in the White House to preside over a balanced budget was Bill Clinton way back in 1999-2000, and the last one before that was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. Trump is not, by nature, a man who likes to balance the books. He is a big-spending politician, even if in his case the spending takes the form of tax cuts for businesses and entrepreneurs instead of extra welfare or green spending. That said, politics is rarely very fair. The music has stopped, and Trump will be the man who has to finally start making cuts. He has the authority, and the majority, to finally make significant reductions in welfare programmes, in tax breaks for everything from home ownership to charitable donations, and to military and defence spending. Trump has already floated the idea of the tax increase for anyone earning more than $2.5m a year, but he may well have to go a lot further than that, with a broad range of tax rises for the American middle class as well. This is his second term, so Trump doesn't have to worry about whether he will be re-elected or not. He has the political space to make some unpopular decisions, and he may well be able to sell them to the public. In reality, he no longer has much choice. The markets have already worked out that the president will change his policies if enough pressure is applied. It happened over tariffs – even if he threatened a 50pc levy on imports from the EU on Friday – and over the independence of the Federal Reserve. It can work again over the budget deficit. The bond vigilantes smelled blood this week, and yet the blunt truth is that yields will have to spike significantly higher. But the 'one big, beautiful bill' is not going to last long. It might only take a few weeks, or it might play out over several months, but the markets are about to force Trump to accept a very different role than the one he imagined for himself. He will have to become the first president since Clinton to, if not exactly balance the budget, at least bring the soaring deficit back under control – because right now the US is buckling under the weight of its accumulated debts, and the party cannot last much longer.
Washington Post
15-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Walz contrasts Minnesota's bipartisan budget breakthrough with Washington's deep divisions
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Gov. Tim Walz and leaders of the Minnesota Legislature announced a hard-fought budget deal Thursday, contrasting the bipartisan cooperation that produced the agreement with the deep divisions that have tied Washington in knots. The Democratic governor and former vice presidential candidate noted that he was sharply critical of President Donald Trump's administration, and what he considers the dysfunction in the nation's capital, when he delivered his State of the State address last month. But he also stressed back then that Minnesota could write its own story. Legislative leaders from both parties accepted that challenge, he said, and came up with a fiscally responsible balanced budget despite their ideological differences.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mammoth $254B NY state budget revealed, goes up for vote: ‘Albany at its cynical worst'
The bulk of the mammoth $254 billion state budget deal was unveiled Wednesday with some last minute self-serving quietly slipped into the batter before Albany lawmakers were set to finally vote on it. The spending plan documents — nicknamed 'The Big Ugly' in capital lingo — provide a last-minute, warts-and-all look at much-anticipated legislation focused on New York City's mental health crisis, recidivism problems and more. Gov. Kathy Hochul ran a victory lap Wednesday after a deal to revamp the state's discovery laws — a move to combat a slew of criminal cases that have been getting dismissed on technicalities. The tweaks caused a weeks-long impasse on the overall mammoth budget deal. New York Senate lawmakers debate budget bills during a legislative session in the Senate Chamber at the state Capitol Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Albany, NY. Hans Pennink 'I said all along I would hold up a $250 billion budget on this issue,' she said. Sources have hinted to The Post that the budget's final price tag will actually be more than the $254 billion hinted by Hochul. The discovery changes will prevent criminal cases from being thrown out over trivial mistakes and narrow how much evidence prosecutors must turn over to defense attorneys. Involuntary commitment standards – the rules by which severely mentally ill people can be forced into psychiatric care against their will – will be expanded and loosened under the agreement. Hochul and state lawmakers reached the deal after months of backroom talks prompted in part by violence in the subways, random attacks on the city's streets and Mayor Eric Adams using his bully pulpit to push for changes to involuntary commitment rules. Kathy Hochul, joined by Queens DA Melinda Katz, Bronx DA, Darcel Clark, Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Staten Island DA Michael McMahon announce changes to State discovery laws on May 7, 2025. James Messerschmidt The budget was due April 1, but it went far over that deadline — a delay that state Sen. Jim Skoufis (D-Orange) lambasted. 'I'm sick and tired of one individual – the Governor – superseding the will of up to 213 duly elected Senators and Assembly Members,' he said in a statement. 'The current operating procedure is nothing short of authoritarian.' Albany's single-party Democratic rule also let Hochul, state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) sign off on a slew of self-serving deals for their party faithful. The New York state Capitol is seen as lawmakers vote on budget bills Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Albany, N.Y. Hans Pennink for the NY Post The state budget package wraps in measures to help incumbents game New York's new public campaign financing system, allow lawmakers to keep collecting salaries from side jobs and assist Hochul in warding off a challenge from her estranged lieutenant governor. 'All in all, it's a generally bad Albany at its cynical worst, and we have nothing positive to say about this and how they've done this just underlines that these are self-serving changes Democratic incumbents,' John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, told The Post. The budget also includes a highly controversial measure pushed by Orthodox Jewish communities that would make it easier for Yeshivas to demonstrate compliance with educational standards that public schools need to meet. A man who attacked an MTA worker with a hammer in the 14th St. and 8th Ave L train station in Manhattan, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022 is taken into custody by police at the scene. Robert Mecea for NY Post The state Department of Education required non-public schools to demonstrate their curriculums are 'substantially equivalent' to those of public schools. A 2023 investigation by the city's education department found 18 Yeshivas weren't educating students on basic English and math. 'Despite how people try to characterize this, this is not the elimination of substantial currency,' Hochul told reporters Tuesday. The new plan will give the non-public schools several other different ways to prove substantial equivalency beyond those outlined by the state education department, which is opposed to the move. Additional reporting by Haley Brown
