The Patriot Post® · Walz the Big Spender

Tim Walz likes to spend money. The problem is, it’s other people’s money he likes spending. And these other people have been Minnesota taxpayers.

As the Democrat governor of the Gopher State, Walz has spent gobs of taxpayer money on radical leftist agenda issues, with environmentalism causes near the top of the list. Walz is a true believer in the Green New Deal. Which makes sense, since it’s neo-Marxism wrapped in a package of environmental concerns. And while the Leftmedia has gone to great lengths to paint Walz as a moderate, his record belies that claim.

Walz is a hard-core radical who has used his position as governor in a blue state to push leftist policies hard. Only California has implemented more green agenda policies than Minnesota. Under Walz, the state government has put its thumb on the scales in favor of renewable energy. Beginning next year, Minnesotans will be required to purchase 25% of their electricity from renewable sources. Furthermore, the law Walz signed prevents Minnesota from selling conventionally generated power to neighboring states.

Of course, all this is justified under the dubious auspices of combating climate change.

In July, the Biden-Harris administration touted “delivering unprecedented funding and resources to help Minnesota fight climate change, safeguard public health and grow its economy.” In a July press release about “climate smart food systems” for which Walz was granted $200 million, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator for Minnesota Debra Shore wrote, “EPA congratulates Gov. Walz for his leadership and innovative plans to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions by decarbonizing the state’s food system across agricultural, industrial and waste sectors, to building a greener, cleaner, healthier future for all Minnesotans.”

Despite all his green agenda spending, Minnesota ranks 23rd among the states for highest carbon emissions and still generates only 4% of its electricity from solar.

But sensible spending and fiscal restraint are apparently not something Walz concerns himself with. When it came to handing out pandemic relief funds, no state spent more of its share of the federal government-provided State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) than Walz’s Minnesota.

According to the Government Accountability Office, Democrat-run states spent these funds faster than Republican-run states. As National Review’s Dominic Pino observed, “The SLFRF was really a slush fund for Bidenomics, with state and local-level politicians using the extra federal dollars for things that had nothing to do with pandemic relief, some of which were little more than progressive political projects.”

Minnesota, even with a state budget surplus, spent 99% of its SLFRF funding by September of last year. Compare that to Oklahoma and South Carolina, which had only spent 5% of those funds by that point.

Indeed, no state spent those funds faster than Minnesota — more than $4.2 billion as of the first quarter 2024. And this money was spent on everything from zoos to museums to athletic fields to a DEI program. Furthermore, Walz, who watched Minneapolis burn in the wake of the George Floyd riots, requested and was granted by the Biden-Harris administration $2.2 million in SLFRF funds for “civil unrest expenses.” This taxpayer money was needed by the Minnesota State Patrol for “maintaining safety and security for large-scale events and protests in fiscal year 2022.”

And then there’s the massive pandemic relief fraud that occurred under Walz’s watch, to the tune of some $250 million. Evidently, when you’re so busy spending other people’s money, you don’t have time to ensure that it goes to the right programs and people.

With our national debt now over $35 trillion, the last thing America needs is leadership whose answer for everything is spending more and more.