Pledging fealty to the number 34

Brian Rusche, who had to explain things very slowly to Doug Wardlow,  penned a great op-ed in the Strib's paper edition yesterday. Here's the online version, and here's the lede:

Minnesota's legislative leaders are locked in a protracted dispute with the governor, not about the quantity or quality of government output, but out of devotion to a single number: $34 billion. 

Legislative leaders insist that all other policy considerations must take a back seat to the singular goal of keeping general-fund revenues and expenses at that amount for the next biennium.This is numerology without principle. It treats one general-fund number like an idol, a number to be prized above the concerns and needs of our citizenry.

 Rusche is just so lucid that it would be in poor taste for me to even try to summarize what he wrote. Please just go read it yourself.