April 29, 2011 - Balanced Approach needed to Build Minnesota’s Future Prosperity
From Ready 4 K
The Legislature is in the final weeks before the constitutional deadline to reach an agreement on the Minnesota budget. Currently, there remains a $5 billion deficit over the next two years. It’s important that legislators continue to hear from you as they make important decisions on how to resolve this deficit.
The House and Senate have stated that they aim to resolve this deficit without raising revenues. This all-cuts approach would be devastating to Minnesota children and families. Invest in Minnesota is promoting a campaign, “20 Ways in 20 Days”, to share the potential impact of an all-cuts approach. On Thursday, the story related to child care. You can read the story here.
All legislators are getting a paper copy of the story every day, so you can reference this when you connect with legislators.
Currently, the House and Senate are proposing significant cuts to child care and other programs that support early learning. See our side by side comparison of Governor, House and Senate budget proposals.
We need you to contact your legislator and tell them that providing for our youngest Minnesotans is vital to our future prosperity.
Feel free to use your own words and share from your own perspective. The message we want to convey is that we want to maintain investments in early childhood and Minnesota’s future and that we need a balanced approach to resolving the budget deficit that includes revenues in order to do that. Here’s an example:
“The path to Minnesota’s future prosperity begins with the well-being of all our children, and the state is wise to continue investing in high quality early childhood programming and services. Quality settings and positive adult interactions lay a strong foundation in the early years and increase the probability of successful outcomes in school and life, in turn giving the state a 16 to one return on its investment. Conversely, a weak foundation increases the odds of later difficulties and raises costs to the state. We need a balanced approach to the budget deficit that includes revenues so that we can invest in our future prosperity. We can either lay the foundation now or pay the price later.”
Thank you for your ongoing efforts to support our youngest Minnesotans.