About Tim Pawlenty:
State budget
Pawlenty was elected in 2002 on a platform of balancing the state's budget without raising taxes. He emphasized his campaign and first term with the Taxpayers League of Minnesota slogan "no new taxes."[31] His governorship was characterized by a historically low rate of spending growth. According to the Minnesota Management and Budget Department, general-fund expenditures from 2004 to 2011 increased an average of 3.5 percent per two-year term, compared to an average of 21.1 percent from 1960 to 2003 (these numbers, however, are not inflation-adjusted).[32][33][34] University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs said that slowing down state spending and opposing tax increases were the "signature issue" of Pawlenty's governorship.[35]
In his first year as governor, Pawlenty inherited a projected two-year budget deficit of $4.3 billion, the largest in Minnesota's history.[36] After a contentious budget session with a Democrat-controlled Senate, he signed a package of fee increases, spending reductions, and government reorganization which eliminated the deficit. The budget reduced the rate of funding increases for state services, including transportation, social services, and welfare. It also enacted a perennial proposal to restructure city aid based on immediate need, rather than historical factors. In negotiations the governor agreed to several compromises, abandoning a desired public employee wage freeze and property tax restrictions.[36]
During his second term, Pawlenty erased a $2.7-billion deficit by cutting spending, shifting payments, and using one-time federal stimulus money.[37] His final budget (2010–2011) was the state's first two-year period since 1960 in which net government expenditures decreased. Pawlenty has claimed this as "the first time in 150 years" that spending has been cut, but fact-checkers have disputed this claim as no public budget records prior to 1960 are known to exist.[34][38]
Pawlenty has been criticized by some for providing a short-term budget solution but coming up short in his long-term strategy as governor. The state department of Management and Budget reports that the two-year budget starting in July 2011 is projected to come up $4.4 billion short.[37] Former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson, a Republican, criticized Pawlenty's budget strategy: he borrowed more than $1 billion from the tobacco settlement (money set aside for health care), borrowed more than $1.4 billion from K-12 education funding, borrowed more than $400 [million][39] from the Health Care Access Fund for low-income families, among other short-term shifts in accounting. The result was a $5-billion deficit, the seventh largest in the United States.[40] Minnesota property taxes rose $2.5 billion, more than the previous 16 years combined, and Moody's lowered the state's bond rating.[41] Carlson told Time, "I don't think any governor has left behind a worse financial mess than he [Pawlenty] has." Pawlenty responded, "My friend governor Arne Carlson is, of course, now an Obama and John Kerry supporter."[42]
Crime
Crime in Minnesota was a high-profile political issue during Pawlenty's governorship. When crime rates in Minneapolis spiked 16 percent from 2004 to 2005, city officials blamed Pawlenty for large cuts to state aid, which they said restricted public safety resources. Pawlenty in turn criticized the capital city for poorly allocating its funding.[93]
Pawlenty made two large efforts to expand penalties for sexual offenders. In response to his first proposal in 2005, the state legislature passed a large package of sentencing reforms. One new instrument was the possibility of a life sentence without parole for serious offenders, although Pawlenty expressed disapproval at the courts' reluctance to use this option: only seven individuals received such a sentence in the first two years of implementation.[94] Pawlenty made a push for even harsher sentences in 2010, which increased the presumptive sentence for first-degree sex offenses from 12 years to 25 years and increased it further for repeat offenders. At the same time he advocated for a $90-million expansion of the state's civil commitment program for sexual offenders, maintaining that the increased criminal sentences would keep the commitment program's cost under control.[94] According to a single report in the Star Tribune, "A report on Minnesota's sex-offender program delivered to legislators in the final days of the Pawlenty administration was heavily edited by a top political appointee to reflect the former governor's skepticism about the effectiveness of treatment and to delete arguments for expanded community resources for offenders."[95]
Early in 2006, after issuing a study that estimated the cost of illegal immigration to the state as approximately $188 million, Pawlenty announced a program for changing the way the state dealt with persons who were in the United States illegally. Pawlenty said that the economic benefits of illegal immigration did not justify the illegal behavior.[96] Pawlenty's extensive proposal included the designation of 10 state law enforcement officials as the Minnesota Illegal Immigration Enforcement Team, "trained to question, detain and arrest suspected illegal immigrants" with a focus on "such crimes as human trafficking, identity theft, methamphetamine distribution and terrorism." He rounded out his proposal with tougher penalties for false identification, and instituting a fine of up to $5,000 for employers of illegal immigrants. His proposal was challenged by DFL senators who preferred increased legal immigration to punitive action.[97
Personal life
Tim Pawlenty with his wife, Mary
Pawlenty and his wife Mary have two daughters, Anna and Mara. Mary was appointed as a judge of the Dakota County District Court in Hastings, Minnesota, in 1994. After he was elected governor in 2002, the family remained at their Eagan home instead of moving into the Governor's residence because of his wife's requirement to live in her judicial district.[171] In 2007, she left her judicial position to become General Counsel of the National Arbitration Forum, a dispute-resolution company based in Minneapolis.[172] She stayed on only briefly before departing for another dispute-resolution company, the Gilbert Mediation Center.[173]
Pawlenty was raised a Roman Catholic. His conversion to an Evangelical Protestant faith has been attributed to his wife Mary, who is a member of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota,[174] a member congregation of the Minnesota Baptist Conference. In a January 2011 interview, Mr. Pawlenty stated, "I love and respect and admire the Catholic Church. I still attend Mass once in a while there. The church I now attend is an interdenominational church which has got many former Catholics in it, and so we share the Christian faith and the Bible. I had to reconcile my faith life with my wife so we could have a consistent, integrated family faith life."[175]
Pawlenty frequently uses (and is referred to by) the mononym "TPaw" or "T-Paw".[176][177][178]
And here it comes.................
Political views
Pawlenty is generally considered a conservative on the American political spectrum. With regard to his economic record, he has drawn mixed reviews from fiscally conservative interest groups.[179] The lobbying group Taxpayers League of Minnesota gave Pawlenty an average approval score of 80% during his years as a state legislator, while the Cato Institute think-tank gave him scores ranging from C to A across his eight years as governor.[71] In February 2008, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak wrote that Pawlenty was the most conservative Minnesota governor since Governor Theodore Christianson in the 1920s.[99] A 2011 white paper by the Club for Growth, analyzing Pawlenty as a presidential candidate, found his political stance difficult to identify. The group praised him for reduced growth in spending and taxation, but found that he "has some simply inexcusable tax hikes in his record" and questioned his support of proposals such as "mandatory vegetable oil in gasoline, cap and trade, and a statewide smoking ban."[71] Chris Edwards, a director at Cato, speculated that Pawlenty's rightward tack in his second term was related to his impending presidential run.[179] In Pawlenty's 2018 Minnesota gubernatorial campaign, he received an A rating from the National Rifle Association, supports permit-to-carry laws, and is open to an optional background check for private firearm sales.[180]
Pawlenty voted for President Donald Trump and "support
most of what's he's doing, nearly all of what he's doing on a policy level." In 2016 Pawlenty had expressed disapproval of Trump's "comments and language and behavior", calling the president "unsound, uninformed, unhinged and unfit" during his campaign. Pawlenty stated that since the election, "he's made a lot of great progress as leader of our country and president of the United States in terms of policy priorities and the outcomes."[181]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Pawlenty
Tim Pawlenty on the issues. Everyone should read it. He's a Conservative. The only reason this is happening to anyone is because they have criticized Trump at one time or the other. Trump demands absolute admiration. Otherwise regardless of whether you are working toward Trumps goals or not you are gone.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Tim_Pawlenty.htm#Immigration
More on Tim Pawlenty at the link.
And I have no idea why it keeps posting with the lines through it. I have tried to fix it. We can all see what it says.
