State lawmakers should return to the Minnesota Capitol next week with sharp pencils and firm resolve to resist spending that adds obligations to the budget.

Conversations with House and Senate members from St. Paul in recent weeks — and the budget and economic forecast released Friday — make clear that restraint should be a focus for lawmakers’ attention and public scrutiny this session.

The mandate to proceed cautiously with the now-$900 million projected budget surplus is increasingly compelling in light of concerns about a slow recovery and economic challenges that members of the St. Paul delegation noted in meetings with our editorial board as they prepare for the call to order on March 8.

The budget surplus is down from an earlier projection of $1.2 billion. The accompanying forecast notes a weaker U.S. economic outlook and cites three negative influences: a glut of business inventories, depressed oil-related investment and the drag on global trade from the stronger dollar. Closer to home, the forecast highlights the state’s stable budget outlook — along with indicators that include a sharp drop in global iron-ore prices leading to significant cutbacks in the state’s mining sector.

Calls for restraint we heard Friday are welcome. It makes sense, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk told us, to treat the surplus as one-time money that won’t recur. To the extent his colleagues do so, the Democrat from Cook said, “I think we’ll just be in a better position this time next year.” As we’ve observed:

Spending begets spending. Funding programs that increase government base spending sets us on an unsustainable path for more spending in years to come. Every dollar not spent today is a dollar-plus-inflation that doesn’t have to be spent tomorrow and the next day and the next.

The path already is steep enough. General fund spending over the last two decades — interrupted only by the impact of the Great Recession on the 2010-11 biennium — rose from less than $20 billion in 1996-97 to $41.5 billion in 2016-17.

Our history offers a valuable lesson: Tax cuts, followed by major reforms in 2001, resulted in a decade of management efforts that included accounting gimmicks and borrowing. The surplus-to-deficit scenario is one that bears not repeating.

Room to maneuver: We’ve been warned, repeatedly, about preparing for spiking demand for costly services from an aging baby-boom generation. Between 2010 and 2030, the number of people older than 65 in Minnesota is going to double; the number of those older than 85 will triple, according to the state’s Department of Human Services.

When it comes to wise ways to spend our one-time dollars, Rep. Alice Hausman, ranking Democrat on the House Capital Investment Committee and a St. Paul Democrat, is among those talking about infrastructure, “where you get a project done and it doesn’t add to the base budget in the next go-’round.”

Such projects stand in contrast to spending, for example, for universal pre-K education, which would amount to a new commitment by the state to spend into the future.

Surplus dollars for infrastructure don’t have those long strings attached. Checking some road, bridge and other infrastructure projects off the list makes sense now and takes a burden off future spending. The projects — essential to the economic health and competitiveness of the state — deserve fair consideration.

But our conversations with lawmakers also included signals that such projects — along with the Big Three issues this session: bonding, taxes and transportation — could remain in play until a last-minute deal is made.

And there’s talk, as well, that what should be relatively simple tax-law changes needed to advance a professional soccer stadium in the Midway area of St. Paul could similarly be held up until the last days of the session.

“There has to be a better way,” the Pioneer Press’ Rachel Stassen-Berger wrote about the flurry of such closed-door deal-making that concluded the 2015 session.

It “ended with lawmakers voting on budget bills they had no time to read and little time to discuss,” she wrote, noting the misreading of bill numbers, shouting as the House speaker gaveled the session to adjournment and more.

This year, “better-way” efforts will treat this year’s so-called “surplus” for what it is: one-time money.

 

— St. Paul Pioneer Press, Feb. 28