Service Employees Union Calls for GOP to Stop Choosing Millionaires over Minnesotans and Bring Sustainable Revenues to Table

Saint Paul, MN – SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and SEIU Minnesota State Council President Julie Schnell issued the following statement in regard to the budget compromise struck today by Governor Dayton and GOP legislative leaders.

“To protect Minnesota families from the most draconian cuts in the short term, Governor Dayton felt that he must concede to the fiscally irresponsible budget demands of the GOP leadership who have used their government shutdown to take middle class and working Minnesota families hostage in an effort to protect the richest 7700 Minnesota tax filers, over half of which aren’t even Minnesotans.

On the contrary, SEIU does not believe that we should give in to the demands of the GOP leadership, who have refused to negotiate in good faith, and who would use the state’s children, middle class and working families as a human shield to protect 7700 multi-millionaires from having to share any of the burden of the state’s fiscal problems, resulting from the past eight years of shifts and gimmicks under Tim Pawlenty.

We cannot afford to kick our budget problems down the road.  SEIU strongly believes that such irresponsible budget gimmicks will only increase the pressure on future budgets and that the consequences will be borne by our children, our seniors, and the overwhelming majority of Minnesota families, at a scale to make the pain inflicted upon Minnesota by the GOP shutdown, though acute, seem trivial in comparison.

Until we see a good faith proposal from the GOP leadership, we do not believe we should mortgage our state’s future.  The only compromise this achieves is the compromising of our state’s working families.”

SEIU Local 284 Executive Director Carol Nieters said, “These irresponsible GOP budget gimmicks put the burden, literally, on our children, in monies borrowed from our schools, in junk bonds borrowed against future tobacco settlement revenues, and in failing to ask the richest Minnesota tax filers to pay their fair share.”

Nieters added, “In these tough economic times, borrowing from our schools is just a cut by another name.  What this means for our children is simple: class sizes will rise, programs will be cut, achievement will suffer, and more districts will look to raise property tax levies just to keep the doors open – taxes borne disproportionately by all of us so that multi-millionaires can avoid paying their fair share.”

SEIU Local 26 President Javier Morillo pointed out that “For all their accusations of ‘taxing and spending,’ the GOP leadership seems to be perfectly happy to borrow and spend to protect their multi-millionaire backers from having to pay their fair share.”

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For more information, please contact SEIU MN State Council Executive Director Brian Elliott at belliott@seiu.mn or 612-703-4987.