The Fact: You might know that Minnesota legislatures go in two-year sessions, called biennials. This is the second year of the 2009-2010 biennium. The even-year session focuses on bonding, building projects, and are usually shorter than the first year sessions. 2010 is a bonding year and the legislature will be facing a $1.2 billion deficit, requiring the legislature to take additional action to balance the budget.
The Feeling: I get a little apprehensive every time I face a bonding-year. It might be that on a personal level, money and I just don’t get along all that well…or it might be that I am old enough to remember many legislative sessions where the budget was balanced on the backs of our children. Whatever the reason, I feel a little nervous.
My usual solutions to quell nervous feelings, strong cups of dark roast coffee, dark chocolate truffles, or lunch with a friend, just won’t work when it comes to protecting our children at the legislature!
The Roadmap: What I know will work, though, is rallying as many voting citizens as possible and creating a strong, loud voice for our children at the capitol. My message is going to be: Never cut programs and services that benefit children in order to clear a deficit or balance a budget! The needs of children must be the one thing that rises above cuts when it comes to balancing the budget.
Now to recruit that rally of voices for our children! This is the perfect time to call your legislators: introduce yourself, thank them for representing you, and ask them to ask themselves before they vote on any legislation: “how will this affect our children?”
Bring on the session!
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." - Nelson Mandela
The Children’s Defense Fund Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
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My colleagues in the Senate DFL caucus and I are beginning to craft our “priority bills” for the session. We’ve determined that the first substantial bills will be focused on job creation, reform and accountability, and money-saving mandate reductions for local governments, schools, and other bodies. These bills will be works-in-progress all session, but they are good reminders of what our top three priorities must be as we work on the overall budget solution this year.
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