In Thursday's Minnesota House floor session, freshman House District 17A Representative Tim Miller said he was all for limiting the State of Minnesota's budget to $39 billion, though he would submit to vote for a larger figure if things the Governor wanted to do forced him to.
Call it 17A Shades of Grey. (Even before he was elected, Miller craved a relationship with Senate Majority Whip Lyle Koenen, so it's not entirely surprising).
Miller made his demurral in response to a question from Representative Ryan Winkler (DFL-Golden Valley), related to an amendment to the House rules offered by the suburban Democrat that would have capped the state budget at $39 billion.
Here's a transcript, followed by video of the special moment after Miller yielded to Winkler's question.
Winkler: Thank you Mr. Speaker. Would Representative Miller yield to a question?
Speaker Daudt: He will yield, Representative Winkler.
Winkler: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Representative Miller, I have a--it looks like a letter that was sent out in February, it talked about a "massive 2.1 billion dollar tax increase passed--rammed through by Democrats" and it says that "instead of giving it all back, used half of it to explode the size of government even more."
If you pass any more than a 39 billion dollar this year, will you still be exploding the budget, exploding government?
Speaker Daudt: The member from Kandiyohi [County], Representative Miller.
Miller: Mr. Speaker, Representative Winkler, thank you for that question. If would actually support the limit on the budget to 39 billion dollars. I'd be excited to see a budget that would do that.
In the end when the final budget comes through, I hope we can approach that number. I'd like for it to be at that number but if in the end it ends up being more due to some of the things the governor wants to do and I have no control over that perhaps, then I'll have to vote for a budget that goes over that, but I certainly hope not. Thank you.
Let Bluestem be the first to suggest a safe word for Representative Miller: Duininck.
When push came to shove late in Thursday's floor session, and the Prinsburg Republican had to decide whether to let the amendment be referred to committee or considered in an up or down vote on the floor, Miller voted to send the Winkler measure to committee.
That leaves him open for letting Governor Dayton have his way with him.
In our post, Tim Miller calls Andrew Falk's dad a "leading Republican," hits him up for campaign cash, Bluestem reported about the letter Winkler cited in the question to Miller.
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Just as with the Fifty Shades (which was originally a Twilight fanfiction before its author altered it ever so slightly), the dominance and submission activities shown in 17A Shades would never pass muster with most of the BDSM community. The main reason? Lack of informed consent, or of any kind of meaningful communication of wants or needs.
As we have seen, Rep. Miller cannot communicate things even if Abraham Lincoln were whispering them into his ear. As for informed consent, he has a horror of that sort of thing, and not just because he's horrified by knowledge in general: If people had known the truth about him and his corporate-pretending-to-be-rural agenda, he'd have been defeated at the ballot box with ease.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Feb 14, 2015 at 09:52 AM