MINNESOTA CONSENSUS?MINNESOTA CONSENSUS?For persons interested in social justice issues, like the readers of The Witness, the decision three years ago by the Episcopal Church to hold its 74th General Convention in Minnesota must have seemed ordained, even blessed. Granted, at the time Minnesota had an odd, bombastic, off-the-wall governor, a former wrestler named Jesse Ventura; but it also had the most liberal member of the U. S. Senate, Paul Wellstone. And it had a deserved reputation for an excellent quality of life. State Rankings 2003 shows Minnesota ranking number one in voting, number one in percent of women in the labor market, number three in the per capita state appropriations for the arts, number four in SAT scores, number four in the rate of home ownership, seventh in the rate of high-school graduations. It ranked 49th in poverty and 49th in the percentage of its population in jail; it was 47th in the percentage of the state’s population not covered by health insurance, 50th in age-adjusted death rate due to diseases of the heart, 46th in the rate of births to unmarried women as a percentage of all births. (All these rankings are based on data from 2001, sometimes even from 2000. There’s always a considerable data-gathering lag when state-to-state comparisons are involved.)
Minnesota had something else to go along with these excellent quality of life rankings: high taxes and a high rate of spending. In 2000 Minnesota ranked fifth in the nation in terms of per capita state and local taxes collected, fourth in per capita state and local expenditures. Minnesota also has a good record in terms of non-governmental funding of social and religious services: It’s seventh in the nation in the United Way’s Caring Index.
There exists in every state in the U.S. a debate between those who think governmental spending can bring desired social outcomes and those who think that, generally, government spending is wasted. In Minnesota, the spending-can-do-good group was in the ascendancy. Adherents of this philosophy thought they had good proof and, in 2000, there still appeared to be a Minnesota political consensus – an agreement that good social outcomes were important and that those outcomes could be purchased, or at least encouraged, through adequate spending. Minnesota was a high tax/high service state and (relatively) proud of it.
Now, three years later, The Witness readers and all Anglicans interested in progressive politics have a right to feel like the victims of a gigantic bait and switch. The Minnesota you thought you were coming to back in 2000 has changed dramatically. Something on the order of 20 percent of the state’s spending on social services was cut during the state’s last legislative session, which ended a few days after Memorial Day, at the end of a two-week special session. Programs to provide at-home services to seniors and shut-ins were slashed 27 percent. Middle income people saw $1000 to $1500 monthly increases in what they were expected to pay for early childhood care. About 15,000 people have lost or will soon lose their government jobs, with many more layoffs occurring in the nonprofit and even business sectors because of the welter of program eliminations. Domestic partner benefits, negotiated for state employees by their unions, were removed by the Legislature. The state’s sheriffs were required, much to their dismay, to issue gun permits to virtually anyone who asks for them, which will result, officials estimate, in a nine-fold increase in the number of legal concealed weapons in the next two years, to about 90,000. Some political leaders began discussing the previously un-discussable in Minnesota, bringing back the death penalty after nearly a 100-year absence.
Despite all of this bad news on the social justice front, Minnesota still hasn’t caught up to the rest of the country. It remains possible for Minnesotans to argue about, for example, sliding fee child care and the income level at which Minnesota families ought to pay 100 percent of the costs. There are states in this union where the very idea that the "state" ought to be involved in early childhood education is anathema. Minnesota is still not one of those states.
Nonetheless, Minnesota has changed and become, at least temporarily, more like the rest of the country. Daniel Elazar, the now-deceased political scientist who created the widely studied and restudied idea of differing state-level political cultures, found Minnesota to be the purest form of what he called a "moralistic" culture, i.e. one in which the real purpose of politics was providing for the common good, as opposed to those states where the purpose of politics seemed to be the provision of individual or small-group benefits for those favored by the system. This cultural orientation led to the widely accepted tenet in Minnesota politics that government could be a positive force in people’s lives.
Early in its history, Minnesota provided extensive community services to its citizens, usually through local governments. To this day the state has the most active local governments in the nation, providing a bewildering array of services to citizenry simply because the citizens needed and wanted the services and, when they were instituted, no one save the local municipality was willing to provide them or able to provide them at an affordable cost.
Minnesota’s governmental activism moved to the state level in the early 1970s when a Democratic governor supported and passed the proposal of good-government Republicans who had first suggested that education spending ought not to be dependent on the property tax wealth of the various school districts. The "Minnesota Miracle" became law after a long special session in 1971. It equalized education spending through the use of state-level revenues instead of just the property tax. Minnesota was one of only two states in the nation which were able to achieve education-related equalization without court intervention.
The idea of equal school opportunity soon crept into other local government services and state support for local governments in property-poor areas became a staple of the state’s communal approach to politics. There were other staples of this approach:
There was, in short, what some called a "Minnesota Consensus." It was based on the belief that an active and expansive role for government eventually led to better social and economic outcomes. Not only did Minnesota kids generally score better on national tests than the kids from other states, Minnesotans enjoyed higher income and the state had higher population growth than most other states, despite being in the Midwestern "rust belt." Minnesota ranked fourth in median household income in 2001, with a level 12 percent above the next Midwestern state, Illinois, which was in 14th place.
Minnesota, it seemed, had a better economy and less social pathology not in spite of its high taxes and high spending but because of them. There was a relationship between governmental activism and quality of life. Much of the governmental activism was actually carried out by non-government employees, from nonprofits and faith-based groups, using government money – sometimes direct grants, more commonly, contracts with the state or counties to provide specific services.
If things were going so well, if high taxes and lots of services left Minnesota with a superior quality of life and a superior economy, why change things? Why cut taxes and services?
The Children’s Faces ProjectArtist Nell Hillsley of Minneapolis, Minn., created The Children’s Faces Project as a way to provoke reflection and action on the growing problem of homelessness. Professional artists worked with children from 14 different churches and schools to paint 1500 portraits of children’s faces to represent homeless children in their community. Mounted on foam board, the Children’s Faces have hung at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, the Minnesota State Capitol, various metro-area churches, and at community celebrations, conferences and gatherings. "The children’s faces represent only a portion of the 3000 homeless children living in emergency shelters or transitional housing on any given night in the Minneapolis—St. Paul metro area," Hillsley says. "The average age of these children is 6. A parent – often a single mother – who holds down a job accompanies most of these homeless children. Lack of affordable housing has created a new class of working homeless families." For guidelines on replicating this community art project, contact St. Mark’s Cathedral at 612-870-7800.
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Before answering that question Minnesota-specifically, it’s important to note that Minnesota was not alone facing a 2003 budget crisis. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimated that every state faced a budget shortfall in 2003; as of late April the total amount was calculated at about $53.5 billion. Minnesota had, however, set itself up for a harder fall than most other states. Through the period of rapidly increasing state revenues, driven by the surge in capital gains taxes, Minnesota slashed taxes while keeping services funded with the boom money. From 1997 to 2001 Minnesota cut taxes every year. In three of those five years, Minnesota cut taxes more than any other state. When the boom stopped, when the stock market turned down and capital gains, which brought in lots of extra money, suddenly turned into capital losses, which were then used to offset some taxes on ordinary income, Minnesota’s pickle was bigger and more sour than nearly any other state’s. An indication of Minnesota’s difficulty: In the tax bill passed in late May 2003, the federal government committed $20 billion to help the states solve their $53.5 billion deficits. In other words, the federal government gave the states a sum equal to 37.4 percent of the collective state deficit. Minnesota, with its $4.2 billion shortfall, received $362 million of that largesse, or 8.6 percent of its deficit. Minnesota’s hole was clearly deeper and wider than the rest.
For many Minnesotans, the answer to the budget deficit was clear. It would require a combination of spending cuts, tax increases and various accounting shifts. That isn’t how it worked out, however. The new Republican governor and a number of Republican legislators signed a pledge that Minnesota would solve its budget deficit without raising state-level taxes. Despite the fact that the pledge was made long before the full extent of Minnesota’s budget deficit was known, the governor stuck to it and permitted no increase in state-level taxes. Spending cuts, fee increases and accounting shifts were the only means used to balance the ’03—’04 biennial budget. Tax cuts in boom times had stemmed the money flow during more difficult times – stemmed it to the point that choosing not to raise state-level taxes meant very large cuts had to be made. Conservatives who disagreed with the Minnesota consensus were suddenly able to dramatically reduce the size of government in the state. The Minnesota high tax/high spending consensus – at least temporarily – was undone.
The new, lower tax/lower service consensus (if, indeed, it exists) did not happen without opposition. Of special note was the activity of the state’s nonprofit and religious sectors. Minnesota’s Joint Religious Legislative Conference (the nation’s first interfaith social justice state lobbying group) had more than 900 people at their February 2003 Day on the Hill. [See sidebar, p. 20.] JRLC’s attitude about slashing government spending was summed up in its brochure promoting the day: "As the new governor calls religious communities to serve more and more of the social safety net, we must remember the ancient wisdom of Augustine of Hippo: ‘Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.’ " The Minnesota Council of Churches, one of the four constituent groups comprising JRLC (together with the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and the American Muslim Council—Minnesota Chapter) issued a statement in early May, when the fight over taxes and services was growing more intense, calling the no-new-taxes plan of Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty "extreme" and reminding Minnesotans of the biblical call for social justice and civic stewardship. (The Episcopal Church, Diocese of Minnesota, is a member of the Minnesota Council of Churches.)
1. The 2002 election in the state was catastrophic for Democrats, who generally tend to favor the Minnesota high tax/high spending consensus more than Republicans. The death of Senator Paul Wellstone in October 2002 demoralized many Democrats. And his memorial service, viewed as too partisan by some, gave those on the right, especially those on talk radio, hours of anti-Democratic fodder. Democrats in Minnesota had been on their way to doing quite well in the 2002 election. They did badly, losing the Wellstone Senate seat, losing the governorship, and losing the House of Representatives by an 82—52 margin. Democrats maintained a slim lead in the state Senate, 35—32. The results of the election meant that a majority of Minnesota’s state-level policy-makers didn’t agree with the high tax/high service consensus of just a few years ago.
2. Minnesota’s Republican Party had become as conservative as many Republican parties in other parts of the country. Favoring a high tax/high service consensus just wasn’t possible for most active Minnesota Republicans. (The fact that this was a change in Minnesota’s Republican philosophy was highlighted by the words of four former governors, three of them Republican, who criticized the current governor, Tim Pawlenty, for abandoning the high tax/high service Minnesota consensus. The last five finance commissioners, two serving in Republican administrations, two in Democratic and one in an Independence Party period, all offered similar criticisms. So did prominent state economists, including a vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank located in Minneapolis.)
3. In the contest for the gubernatorial endorsement by the Republican Party, now-governor Tim Pawlenty was seen as more moderate than businessman Brian Sullivan. Pawlenty had to appeal to the right to get the governor’s job, since convention delegates for both major parties are notoriously more conservative or liberal than the public at large. The method which Pawlenty used to look conservative was a pledge not to raise taxes. The pledge came from a new interest group that dominated the election and the budget-setting period. Called the Taxpayers League, the group was comprised of a number of very conservative and wealthy Republicans who had previously become active in setting the direction of the Republican Party through a political action committee they called the Freedom Club. The Taxpayers League was a new phenomenon in Minnesota politics. It asked all candidates to sign no-tax-increase pledges. The group followed up the campaign period with aggressive advertising during the legislative session, keeping up pressure so that none of their pledgers would think about returning to the Minnesota consensus of the past.
4. Minnesota’s political rhetoric has changed, looking more and more like national political rhetoric. On the national scene, it is not seen as particularly surprising that a war was conducted over weapons of mass destruction when it must have been evident to the administration that these weapons didn’t actually exist or at least didn’t exist in anything like the volume that was implied. The use of indirection and subterfuge are apparently accepted in the service of some greater good, however defined. An analogous process happened during Minnesota’s budget debate. Governor Pawlenty kept assuring Minnesotans that the budget he had proposed was larger than the budget passed two years ago, even though huge cuts in hundreds of programs had to be enacted to make the budget balance. Technically, the governor’s statement was accurate. The state budget he proposed for 2004—2005 was slightly larger than the one passed for 2002—2003. The ’04—’05 budget, however, had more items in it, items which local governments used to pay for, so the comparison was actually not true. There were also considerably more people in need of the various programs the state provides, as always happens when a state’s population grows and it is in a bad economic time. As described earlier, Minnesota had a budget deficit because of its series of large tax cuts passed during boom times. The governor, however, kept assuring everyone that Minnesota had a "spending problem not a taxing problem."
5. Minnesota was a bit late catching on to the intellectualization and sanctification of conservative thought, but the state did eventually catch on. The Center of the American Experiment, a highly successful conservative think tank, was founded in 1991 in Minnesota and has had enormous influence on Republican policy-makers in the state. More importantly, the Center has successfully cast conservative ideas as mainstream and middle of the road, providing room for even more conservative groups, like the Taxpayers League, to push Minnesota’s political consensus rightward.
What can progressives do about the conservative dominance in Minnesota and elsewhere in the nation?
In keeping with the five points above, progressives might wish to consider:
1. Don’t be afraid to work in elections. Who you elect matters a lot.
2. Don’t be afraid to work on political party activity, in whatever party you choose. The more people active in politics whose orientation is social justice, the better our system will be.
3. Don’t be afraid to support or, if necessary, organize an interest group that advocates for poor, disadvantaged or discriminated-against persons. American democracy is based on interest group representation. If you care about folks who have little representation, you’ll need to help them achieve bargaining power.
4. As activists or active observers, make sure that the words of your candidate and of your candidate’s opponent are accurate. It’s not that hard to figure out the difference between truth and falsehood, and the end does not justify the means, even if the great philosopher Machiavelli seems to suggest it does.
5. Help organize a liberal think tank. Liberals have been lazily allowing conservatives to suggest there is no intellectual vigor in liberal thought. The self-evident truths of liberal thinking need to be constantly reinforced; the amoral outcomes of conservative thought need to be constantly exposed, especially by those animated by a sense of the religiously inspired seeking of social justice.
[For more ways to get involved, contact The Interfaith Alliance, People for the American Way or The EPISCOPAL PUBLIC POLICY NETWORK.]
