Former U.S. Senator David Durenberger (R-Minn.), offers the following thoughts in a commentary on his website:
"On a recent visit to Phoenix, I noted that in a state of 6.2 million people growing at more than a million a decade, Arizona's 2005 GOP Legislature proposed a state budget of $8.1 billion. Compare this with Minnesota’s two-year budget of $30 billion, needed to meet the education, healthcare, infrastructure and other investment needs of 5.1 million people. You then begin to ask questions about the role of government in a state with a very low income tax rate (AZ) and one with a fairly high, but declining, income tax rate (MN).
First question: On the presumption that Arizonans can live a good life on much less, where does all the extra tax money raised and spent in Minnesota go? Does it go to waste? Does it cost that much more to live up here? Home heating prices? Are we, and our “above average” children, demonstrably twice as well off?
Second question: What is the total public spending, including local and federal government spending, in Arizona compared with Minnesota? ... There happens to also be a lot of new money in the Medicare Modernization Act for Arizona hospitals. Some of this, through a special MMA provision, is to offset the costs of Mexican documented and undocumented immigrants. The same people who help keep the golf courses and mega-million dollar homes in shape for retiring Minnesotans hoping to escape our harsh winters and taxes.
Third question: As healthcare costs outpace all others, why do “red” states like Arizona have much higher Medicare provider payments, higher private health plan provider payments, and much higher rates of uninsured (17% in AZ, compared to 6.7% in MN)? Most likely because, in the absence of a federal government commitment to finance Medicaid and the uninsured and to pay for performance, Minnesotans have taxed themselves to care for elderly, disabled, low income and working poor in order to reduce the burden of that care on health care providors and federal health programs."