Pawlenty: Might Be Good If Minn. Shutdown Lasted Awhile
Newsmax Wires
The deadlock furloughed about 23,000 of the roughly 36,000 state employees and pulled the plug on many government services, including state parks and campgrounds — and even the lottery.
During a news conference Thursday night at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport just hours before the shutdown, the former governor suggested that he might have done things differently if he had it to do over again with the gridlock on his watch.
“I think it was nine days [of shutdown] at that time, and I think we could have gotten a better deal if we had allowed that to continue for a while and the people of Minnesota would have seen the issues play out a little longer,” he said.
Pawlenty blamed Dayton for the crisis, adding, “The equivalence is this: Both in ’05 and now — you had Democrats demanding that we raise taxes and raise spending.”
July 1, 2011