OUR OPINION: Minnesota needs a budget commission

Irresistable force. Immovable object.

Hurl the former at the latter, and you've got the upcoming Minnesota legislative session, where the budget fight between Gov.-elect Mark Dayton and Republican majorities in the House and Senate promises to go down to the wire.

There is a better way:

A bipartisan budget commission.

It works in Washington. It could work in Minnesota, too.

Bipartisan commissions are effective tools for breaking political stalemates, as President Barack Obama's recent Deficit Reduction Commission showed. No, the commission's final report didn't get the hoped-for 14-of-18 votes. But it did win 11 votes, including a surprisingly balanced lineup of Republicans and Democrats.

That support promises to heavily influence congressional action next year, leaders have announced.

The advantage of commissions is that they're governed by their own political dynamics -- and those dynamics make compromising a lot more likely.

For example, in the absence of a commission, it will be in Dayton and the GOP leaders' interests to hold out until the very end (or beyond). That's what happened in previous sessions with Gov. Tim Pawlenty and majority Democrats: The two sides spent session after session in stare-downs, glaring at each other for months at a time and struggling until the final hours not to blink.

The same bitterness and down-to-the-wire tension often marks labor negotiations, too. But in the Capitol, neither party has the howitzers that labor and management command, such as the weapons of hiring replacement workers or going on strike.

The parties do, however, have something like a mediation tool -- a formal way of getting to "yes":

The bipartisan commission.

For the commission's very purpose is compromise. That's the key. Both sides enter into the process knowing that at the end, they'll each have to give something up.

They're not trying to win, in other words. They're just trying to make a deal.

That clears away acres of brush at the start.

There are other advantages, too.

A commission can keep focused on the core issue -- in this case, Minnesota's budget. The members can give the complex subject the full and lengthy attention it deserves.

In contrast, Pawlenty and the Democrats often found reasons not to talk (let alone deal) with each other at all. Weeks and then months went by with no progress on an agreement.

And a commission gives everyone involved political cover. It's not so much that everyone "wins" at the end. It's that no one "loses." No one burns with humiliation over the other side's triumph, because all sides can claim that they're doing what's right for the state.

That's a powerful force. And in a crisis such as Minnesota is facing, it can push politicians to put their narrow interests aside and embrace the broader and more urgent interests that the commission represents.

Everyone wants to be a statesman, in other words. Commissions let politicians be exactly that.

Dayton and the Republican leadership should set up a commission, have it meet for the session's first months and agree to strongly consider its recommendations. Such a gesture of goodwill and good government would go a long way toward getting the session off to a great start.

-- Tom Dennis for the Herald