Credit: Gllen Stubbe / Star Tribune / Getty
In an era of divided government and partisan gridlock on the federal level, states have become the laboratories for significant social policy experiments on both ends of the ideological spectrum. While Republican-led states have recently approved a bevy of laws advancing conservative priorities, Democratic-controlled states have mirrored that pattern with progressive policies. Perhaps no state has taken more dramatic action in that direction recently than Minnesota, which saw its Democratic governor and legislative majorities work in lockstep, passing several laws to transform the state’s social and economic landscape.
“This was a bonanza year without precedent,” said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, highlighting the fact that the recently passed two-year budget is 40 percent larger than the current one. “Minnesota is an example of a full-on progressive gallop towards greater government activism and a willingness to spend just unimaginable amounts of money.”
Narrow Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate—including a one-vote margin in the upper chamber—made […]
I wish Pa. had fewer Republicans and more Democrats in our state government. I am a disabled person, and a veteran, too. Yet I get the same Social Security payment per year as the Federal Poverty Rate, which is not enough to support my life! I need a lot more money to live on to be healthy, and able to pay taxes. I do not know why a 76 year old person has to pay taxes to the school board when we paid while our children were in school. I no longer have children in school, so why should I have to pay into the school system? It seems insane that being a disabled person with no children in school have to pay for other people’s children to go to school? It just seems unfair!