As I noted yesterday, polling by Gallup showed that the state of the economy was the top issue for American voters in the recent midterms. Acting on this, DFL Majority Leader-elect Jamie Long, told Fox 9 that the top priorities are “childcare, health care, and housing.”
He is faced, however, by Governor-elect Klobuchar’s commitment not to raise taxes. “I have been clear from the very beginning that I’m not going to increase taxes given where Minnesota sits vis-a-vis the rest of the country,” she said in an interview recorded for “At Issue with Tom Hauser.” “I’m not going to do that.”
This isn’t to say that there is nothing state policymakers can do to ease pressures on affordability in Minnesota. Yesterday, I dipped into our recent report “Supplying Hope and Demanding (Real) Affordability: An agenda for Minnesota’s future” to give ideas on health care and housing. Here are our proposals for childcare.
Childcare
My colleague, Martha Njolomole, argued that state policymakers should:
- Ease hiring qualifications for center staff.
- Relax staff-child ratios and group size limits.
- Enhance flexibility for family childcare.
Abundance and affordability
All of these are based on the idea that abundance is the path to affordability; that we make things cheaper by making more of them, not by shunting the cost of paying for them to the taxpayer. These are supply side problems demanding supply side solutions.
We would be happy to work with Rep. Stephenson in pursuit of these policies and bringing real relief to Minnesotans.