T-Paw's budget a model for success

I live in a state, Illinois, that is a budgetary basketcase. Our only solace is that California is (maybe) in worse shape. Had either state been led by Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, things would be much better, as Politico tells us:

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's final budget, completed early Monday morning over the protests of angry Democrats and passed in a special session of the state legislature later in the day, positions the 2012 Republican residential hopeful as the embodiment of conservative governance in hard economic times.

Pawlenty appears to have run the table on the Democratic majorities in both of the houses of the legislature, forcing them to drop plans for new surcharges and scrap their top priority, an expansion of federal and state-funded health care for some of the state's poor. They also enacted spending cuts that a court recently ruled Pawlenty could not make himself.

He will complete his two-term tenure at the end of this year having fulfilled his pledge not to raise taxes, with his approval ratings in positive territory, and having largely avoided the pragmatic compromises that often bedevil governors in polarized party primaries. His success gives him the accomplishments to match his conservative rhetoric, and set a high bar for other ambitious governors facing budget crises of their own in this lean year.

"We have some pretty clear values and principles in mind that we adhere to and when it relates to those core values and principles we don't compromise on," Pawlenty told POLITICO in an interview Monday after what he said was two hours of sleep on each of the two previous nights. "When it comes to issues around the role of government taxes and amounts of spending and other things, those are core values and principles by which we set our compass, and we stay strongly on that course and we battle."

Related posts:

T-Paw on runaway Washington spending and the 2010 elections

T-Paw proposes Minnesota teachers reapply for tenure every five years

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