The Minnesota House is likely going to enter the 2025 Legislative Session as a 67 Republican to 67 Democrat chamber. A tie for control is extremely rare and hasn’t happened since 1979. Currently, the Democrats control the State Senate by one vote and Tim Walz is still the Governor. So the dynamics of the upcoming session couldn’t be more fascinating.
While all the talk right now is who will become the Speaker of the House or how will the committee leadership positions be filled, the one task the legislature has in odd number years is to agree on a biennial budget. Democrats increased the budget by a whopping 36%, or $20 Billion when they controlled all branches of the state government in 2023.
The Democrats got their enormous budget funding increase by robbing taxpayers of a $20 Billion budget surplus that was owed back. If Republicans are going to stand up for anything in this divided legislative session, they should put their foot down on spending and demand it goes back to 2023 levels and the resulting budget surplus given back to struggling Minnesota taxpayers!
The chart above shows the last two biennium budgets, according to the most recent economic forecast, and the projections of revenues for the upcoming Fiscal Year 2026-27 biennial budget. If Republicans force Democrats to bring spending back down to $52 Billion, or the FY2022-23 levels, it would free up nearly $17 Billion in surplus that could be given back to taxpayers. That’s about $6,800 per taxpayer!
