Republicans are moving forward at the Minnesota Legislature with their relief plan for those hit with high health insurance premium increases — but major disagreements remain with the Dayton administration. Management and Budget Commissioner Myron Frans warns it will be expensive and time-consuming to make assistance dependent on income. Frans says, “We’ve gotta make sure, if we’re going to give a refundable tax credit… — like a refundable tax credit — we only want to pay it out to those people who qualify.” Republican Representative Sarah Anderson responds, “There’s a litany of examples of where we have done this and we’ve done it well in state government.”
Anderson points to renter property tax credits that are sent out every year, plus the “Jesse check” tax credits under former Governor Jesse Ventura. Commissioner Frans responds in those cases, recipients were already in the system. “The difficulty in developing a new database with a new group of people — a hundred thousand, or 150 thousand — is we don’t know who these people are and they’re not part of our system,” Frans says.
Here is testimony on other aspects of the issue from Tuesday’s House hearing:
Paul Sobocinski with the Land Stewardship Project:
Dairy farmer James Kanne (CON-ee):