Posted: 03/22/06 19:20, Edited: 03/22/06 23:06
by Dave Mindeman
They've done it again... the Minnesota House Republicans have brought back their "circus act". This time they are trying to "marry" the Constitutional Environmental Sales Tax Bill to their Marriage Amendment travesty.
The Environmental bill in its original form simply asked voters to dedicate a small portion of the state sales tax to environmental projects. But legislators started tacking other proposals onto it.
The ultimate controversy comes with tacking on the so-called Marriage Amendment. This is just another example of how little respect the House Republican majority has for the process.
It's another "circus"....like the 24 hour waiting bill being tacked onto an inconsequential Circus Bill a couple of years ago. Using parliamentary trickery, they stripped the circus part of the bill out and sent the 24 hour abortion waiting period bill directly to the Senate floor.
An MPR report quoted a citizen environmental lobbyist:
This was all too much for Tom Jes of Plymouth, who called the actions of the House Tax Committee a joke.
"I'm almost ready to say we need the clown suits out back, so that somebody can get in there and dance around!" he said.
Even the bill's sponsor, Tom Hackbarth, a Republican House member vented his disgust in the MPR report:
"They don't want it to happen. They're trying to do it in a way that they don't have to upset the hunters and fisherman out there, so we need our little piece of pie and we're going to try to kill this thing by piling on. And I think that's all this is really coming to right now. It's a political game. Started out to be a very, very nice nonpartisan issue that everybody could have supported."
They preach about just wanting up or down votes on bills... but it apparently only pertains to "their" bills on "their" terms.
Here we go again... send in the clowns.
