DFL deficit: Senate DFLers want to spend $100 million on reparations
Last week, we learned that Minnesota’s state government budget surplus for the 2026-2027 biennium had fallen from the $616 million forecast in November to $456 million and that the deficit of $3.5 billion in the 2028-2029 biennium — or $5.1 billion if you account for inflation —was now up to $4.0 billion, or $6.0 billion if you account for inflation.
Despite this dire fiscal outlook, there are still policymakers in St. Paul dreaming up madcap schemes to spend yet more taxpayer money. A striking example is SF 2368.
This bill, authored by Sens. Pappas (DFL), Maye Quade (DFL), Pha (DFL), Boldon (DFL), and Fateh (DFL) is:
A bill for an act relating to state government; establishing the Minnesota Migration Act and Minnesota Migration Act account; requiring a report; appropriating money to study and provide reparation grants for American descendants of chattel slavery who
reside in this state; proposing coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter
363A.
Towards the bottom, it reads:
(b) $100,000,000 in fiscal year 2026 is appropriated from the general fund to the
Minnesota Migration Act account under Minnesota Statutes, section 363A.60.
Aside from its fiscal lunacy, this is an odd bill to bring in a state like Minnesota. As I wrote in our magazine, Thinking Minnesota in a Summer 2020 article titled “Abolitionism in Minnesota,” our state was a strong supporter of efforts to end the evil of slavery: in the presidential election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln won Minnesota with 63% of the vote, his second largest share of the popular vote after Vermont. In the ensuing Civil War, Minnesotan soldiers fought and died on battlefields such as First Bull Run, Mill Springs, Antietam, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Missionary Ridge, and Nashville. Indeed, records show that 21,982 Minnesotans enlisted in the United States armed forces between 1861 and 1865 of whom 635 died in combat and 1,936 as a result of disease or accident. This is equal, proportionately, to 86,000 dead from today’s population. Minnesota paid a high price in blood to save the Union and end the evil of slavery.
This bill is both fiscally irresponsible and historically illiterate. We hope it is rejected.