Photo: The UpTake

Gov. Tim Pawlenty was at odds with his own communications office on a couple points at his press conference yesterday — including the topic of his talk.

Here’s how Pawlenty’s communications director, Brian McClung, billed the event:

Governor Pawlenty will hold a press conference today regarding his future plans.

Never mind that the phrase “future plans” is a notorious redundancy deserving of its own line-item veto. Pawlenty played off all questions on the topic like a rock star who refuses to perform the hit that the promoter promised:

I don’t know what my plans are. I don’t have any plan …

I do not know what my future plans are. I really don’t. …

I’ll just reiterate: I. Don’t. Know. What. My. Future. Plans. Are.

Then there was the answer that the governor’s office had to scramble to take back. Two hours after Pawlenty’s press conference ended, McClung issued this statement:

At today’s press conference, Governor Pawlenty misspoke when he said that our administration considers unallotments as permanent cuts to programs.  The Governor thought he was addressing a question regarding the impacts of line-item vetoes rather than unallotments.  While line-item vetoes are counted as permanent funding reductions, an unallotment only impacts funding for that specific biennium.  The reduction does not carry forward into future years.

Politics in Minnesota’s Steve Perry, who asked the question, wonders whether Pawlenty really thought he was talking about line-item vetoes. Here’s Perry’s transcription:

PIM: Regarding the question of unallotments, I know your administration has studied closely the House Research paper on unallotments, and it points to ambiguities in the law–one of which is that it’s not clear whether unalloting a sector of the budget reduces the base budget going forward. In your view, does it reduce the base budget, or is it a temporary reduction?

Pawlenty: You’re talking about in terms of the forecast beyond the current biennium? Well, I think it’s our position and the Department of Finance’s position that that’s a permanent reduction. But I’ll defer that to the Department of Finance.

Maybe Pawlenty did mix up line-item vetoes with unallotment, lost in the emotion of a moment that some media labeled his retirement from politics (though that seems a mislabeling, and the event was, as Pawlenty reminded reporters, “not a wake”).

But this is a man who ordinarily watches his words. He rarely, for example, flings “Democrat” as a partisan pejorative in place of the more proper adjective “Democratic.” So it was surprising to hear him at the press conference deliver this line in his fed-up, scolding tone:

We need leaders and visionaries and change-agents, not whiners and defenders of the status quo.

You’d think Pawlenty would have excised the word “whiner” from his vocab list last summer, after the man he nearly joined on the national Republican ticket, Sen. John McCain, dispatched former Sen. Phil Gramm from a campaign post for making comments about a “nation of whiners.”

Franken can’t expect to chip away at the debt through Senate back-pay, WCCO’s Pat Kessler reports. Yesterday, the Secretary of the Senate’s office told him that back pay is no longer possible and Minnesota’s next senator will get paid — at a rate of about $464 a day — starting on the day he’s sworn in. Kessler estimates that whoever wins will miss out on around $37,000. And counting.

Mary Ann Akers at The Washington Post says Democrats are ready to blame Gov. Tim Pawlenty, if Franken isn’t seated in the event that the three-judge panel hearing Norm Coleman’s election contest deems him the winner. T-Paw spokesman Brian McClung told Akers the governor wouldn’t issue an election certificate until Coleman’s expected appeal is completed. It’s not welcome news for Democrats:

“Republicans have made it clear they will hold this Senate seat hostage in order to pursue their political agenda — at the hefty expense of Minnesota having full representation in Congress,” says DSCC spokesman Eric Schultz. “Governor Pawlenty has said that Minnesota is suffering from not having two senators. Governor Pawlenty ought to make clear that if former Senator Coleman chooses to appeal the outcome of the contest in the state Supreme Court that this is the end of the road — and that, consistent with the law, he will certify Al Franken the winner following that state court appeal.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell predicted Minnesota won’t have a second seated senator for months, stating that Republicans will use a Bush v. Gore-style defense in state and possibly federal court to appeal on Coleman’s behalf. A key actor in prolonging the contested seat, McConnell said “it’s a shame” Minnesota only has one senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, on the job.

Sharing the “shame,” is Pawlenty, who told the Pioneer Press’ Rachel Stassen-Berger today that having only one senator is “frustrating.” He said, “Any time a state is lacking a member of Congress, it puts you at a disadvantage … If I could appoint a temporary senator, I would, but Minnesota law, unfortunately, doesn’t allow for that… The delay is frustrating, but it’s important the process run its course and we have a comprehensive, fair, just result, and it’s going to take a little more time to get that.” He confirmed McClung’s words: He won’t sign an election certificate until “the law requires me to do so.”

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Pawlenty said, “Unlike my friends in the DFL, who are proposing to cut education, we are increasing education.”

In a followup press release, Pawlenty’s spokesman Brian McClung said, “While DFLers have not issued a priority-based budget, they did make choices. Their plan doesn’t recognize that some parts of the budget are strategically more important. DFLers are choosing social services, welfare and publicly subsidized health care over Minnesota’s K-12 schools and students.”

But Sen. Tarryl Clark said the governor’s message is “don’t get sick, don’t get old, don’t lose your job or you’ll lose health care.”

Pawlenty told reporters that the DFL budget would raise taxes on those making $65,000 a year, but DFLers said that’s not true.

DFL chair Brian Melendez shot back, “Gov. Pawlenty is again spouting his false rhetoric about taxes, misleading Minnesotans for his own political gain. On St. Patrick’s Day, Minnesotans were hoping for a pot of gold from our governor. Instead, we got a crock — of something else. Gov. Pawlenty’s do-over budget again fails to address the economic crisis in a fair, honest, or realistic way.”

As the 86th two-year session of the Minnesota legislature gets underway, Gov. Tim Pawlenty says there’s at least one option off the table to fix a state budget that faces a $4.8 billion shortfall: raising taxes.

“This challenge is going to be very difficult,” Pawlenty told leaders gathered at his Government Reform Summit on Monday. “[I]nterest groups, the stakeholders, legislators, I think, all understand that we can’t take a ‘business as usual’ approach.”

But despite his call to avoid a “‘business as usual’ approach,” Pawlenty said increasing taxes would be off the table. Minnesota hasn’t increased revenues in a decade. The period from 1997 to 2001 saw massive tax cuts and refunds in the form of “Jesse checks” (named after then-Gov. Jesse Ventura) and with the exception of Pawlenty’s 21 percent increase in fees, his “no new taxes” pledge has held from 2002 to 2008.

The co-chair for the campaign of John McCain invoked President-elect Barack Obama’s policy of holding off on tax increases until a stimulus package is passed. “It’s not wise [to increase taxes],” Pawlenty said. “It is not what President-elect (Barack) Obama is doing.”

However, Minnesota cannot legally run a budget deficit and the federal government can.

“We should live within what we’ve got,” Pawlenty said.

And we don’t have much. As Britt Robson reported for the Minnesota Independent in July, Pawlenty presided over $2.7 billion in tax cuts as House Majority leader and has resisted any tax increase in his seven years as governor. Minnesota government took a $4.3 billion cut in 2003 because of those tax cuts and the refusal to increase the amount of money the state takes in. Education, one of Minnesota’s strongest economic drivers, took a big hit.

The structure of the tax cuts has created a regressive tax system, a fact the governor’s own tax study demonstrates. Those with fewer means are paying a larger portion of their income on taxes than those who are wealthy.

Pawlenty plans to combine government services and make cuts to state-sponsored health insurance and other health and human services programs.

“Ideas that were offered include paying for performance, redesigning local government aid, getting better value in health care, reforming chemical-dependency programs, making early childhood programs stronger and more targeted, and connecting higher education to workforce needs,” Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said.

“We’ll be exploring these and other ideas as the governor puts together his budget recommendations.”

A letter to the editor of the Star Tribune offered a novel idea of where some money might be saved. “I’d say Tim Pawlenty’s salary of $120,000 is more than he deserved for the results of his efforts: a $5.2 billion deficit,” said Marcia Aubineau of St. Paul.

“We don’t want you to sound like some of the political candidates where you say the economy is strong and it is not, Brian, it is not.”

How do we read this? Is it merely sour grapes from the guy John McCain passed over? Or might he be anticipating a McCain loss and doing a little preemptive distancing?

Listen to it.

Do you have any evidence related to this charge? These are pretty bold accusations.”

Lahammer took exception and posted the note on her blog, with the following comment:

Frankly, it’s rather creepy to me to have people putting accusatory notes in my office when I’m not there. I have had people stalk me, who leave anonymous notes, follow me and have threatened to kill me. This is true for almost anyone who works in television, so we’re a bit sensitive to such actions. So if anyone knows who is responsible, please let me know because it’s at the very least highly unprofessional and downright creepy.

So who was the highly unprofessional and downright creepy letter writer? None other than Pawlenty press secretary Brian McClung. In an e-mail sent to Lahammer after she published the note, McClung explained himself:

I left you that note around 6:00 p.m. yesterday. I came downstairs to talk with you, but when you weren’t there, I just wrote a note and left it. Unfortunately, I forgot to write my name on it, but after I slid it under the door I figured I’d just call you first thing Tuesday to discuss it. I didn’t intend it as an “anonymous” note, as I always planned to follow up with a call.

After making the long walk between the governor’s office and Lahammer’s desk, McClung was lucky to have a printed copy of the objectionable blog post in hand. Though it is surprising a press secretary would make such a mistake as forgetting to sign his name, it is not a mistake McClung is likely to repeat anytime soon.