Last night, Scott Jensen came out against the bipartisan budget deal that Governor Walz and DFL and GOP legislative leaders announced earlier this week. Jensen said that he would not have agreed to the deal, saying he would have opposed putting billions of dollars back in the pockets of working families just to prevent public schools from receiving badly needed funding. Jensen doubled down on those remarks today, urging Republicans in the Legislature to oppose the budget deal and to “hold the line.”
The compromise deal includes an even split between $4 billion for tax relief, $4 billion for rainy day savings, and $4 billion for investments in public safety, education, and health care.
“Scott Jensen is a partisan extremist who hates the idea of funding our public schools so much that he’ll block billions in tax relief for Minnesota families,” said DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin. “Governor Walz worked with Democratic and Republican leaders to come to a bipartisan compromise that puts money back in Minnesotans’ pockets while investing in our schools and in public safety. How can Scott Jensen expect to govern if he cannot work with members of either party? Minnesota needs their leaders to work together to get results, not Scott Jensen’s partisan agenda.”
The same day that the budget deal was announced, education advocates held an event to highlight how Jensen’s extreme ideological opposition to funding public schools is a threat to students’ education. Jensen’s comments last night underscore just how deeply-rooted his far-right anti-education politics are.
- In 2011, Scott Jensen said that schools had to “share the pain” and led the campaign against a school funding referendum to help Waconia build new schools, which were desperately needed to reduce overcrowding – at the time, Waconia even had to put students in warehouse space
- Jensen opposed Governor Walz’s record investment in public schools in his 2021-2023 budget proposal. A Jensen administration would divert public school funds to private schools, doing nothing for school districts who would face drastic budget cuts
- While in the Legislature, Jensen and his Republican colleagues in the Senate put forward a budget that would have underfunded public schools so drastically that the superintendent of the Anoka-Hennepin school district said, “The Senate budget will be crippling”
