Quite often during any given legislative session, the public believes that legislators in St. Paul are out of touch with the real world. This belief is often confirmed by reports of trivial legislation, like our residents are now safe to host pot luck luncheons without fear of prosecution, or after endless hours of a floor debate lasting into the wee hours of the morning in which the majority party does not let the minority party bring up certain amendments, despite the fact that the majority party would have had the votes to defeat those amendments if they had been allowed to be brought up.

But the term “clueless in St. Paul” seems more apropos than ever with the introduction of HF 2 by Rep. Mindy Greiling, chairwoman of the House K-12 Education Finance Committee, and 34 other House members, including House Speaker Margaret Kelliher.

The bill, dubbed “the New Minnesota Miracle,” (referring to a major change to K-12 funding in the early 1970s labeled as the “Minnesota Miracle”) proposes to increase state funding of K-12 education by a whopping $2.6 billion per year according to the Minnesota Department of Education.

That amounts to a 37 percent annual increase in K-12 funding. A spending increase of this proportion at any time would be gigantic, but the $2.6 billion increase proposed by Rep. Greiling comes when the state is facing a $5 billion shortfall, for the next biennial budget.

Rep. Greiling’s K-12 spending proposal would virtually double the state’s budget deficit over the next two years. But Rep. Greiling and her colleagues are patting themselves on the back because they are supporting “the children.” In reality the only thing Rep. Greiling is doing is proving the case that she and her friends are out of touch with the plight of average Minnesotans.

Currently Minnesota spends nearly $7 billion per year on K-12 education, which equals more than $8,700 per student, yet Rep.Greiling is proposing that the state increase spending by an additional $3,000 per student, bringing state spending to more than $11,700 per student.

Not only does Rep. Greiling not seem to realize the state is facing a $5 billion budget shortfall, she seems to have forgotten how much K-12 education spending has increased in the last decade.

While shopping her budget busting proposal around the state last fall, Rep. Greiling said: “We have been cutting schools and starving them for over a decade …” The fact is that K-12 funding has increased by over $3 billion since 1996 an increase of more than 170 percent with little change in school enrollments, pushing per pupil funding from $5,189 in 1996 to over $8,700 in 2008.

Perhaps Rep. Greiling should not only review the increased funding for K-12 education in the last 10 years but also review the results. Minnesota has on par an excellent education system by most any measure, and there are two facts that illustrate our results: One, Minnesota has the fourth-highest rate of ninth-graders who graduate on time and secondly, Minnesota high school students led the nation in ACT scores for the fourth straight year. These results do not sound like an education system that has been starved.

That being said, study after study shows there is no direct correlation between education spending and test results, so Rep. Greiling’s relentless push for increased K-12 funding in the face of a $5 billion budget shortfall is absurd. She made the statement that “the economy is doing poorly because we’re not doing well in education.” Minnesota’s continued loss of thousands of jobs is not because we don’t have a well educated workforce; so spending billions more on K-12 schools will not bring about improved economic growth in our state. However, there is one thing that likely will add to the growing unemployment in our state — another tax increase.

To that end, Rep. Greiling says: “I think in the end this will get so ugly there will be three Republicans who join the Democrats” to approve a tax increase.

If there is going to be any hope for a state budget resolution before July, legislators need to realize there are finite resources and as much as they may wish they could just print more money like the federal government can, they can’t.

This maybe the year that Minnesota’s education cartel, along with Rep. Greiling, will have to accept the fact that they must live within the means of the state’s taxpayers.

Phil Krinkie is a former Republican state representative from Lino Lakes and the president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. The eight-term lawmaker chaired the House Tax Committee and two other House panels.