Two key differences set apart the budgets that are being offered by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and by Democrats in the Minnesota Legislature.

And Pawlenty comes across poorly in both of them.

The first difference is that the Democrats have declared their willingness to compromise. Pawlenty hasn’t. Just the opposite. Among the negotiating partners — the governor’s office, the Senate and the House — Pawlenty alone has assumed an all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave it stance, one in which he has planted his feet, folded his arms and declared, “No new taxes, period.”

Why bother to have a Legislature if the governor can write and pass the budget himself? Especially when that governor’s party is in the minority, not the majority, in both the Senate and House.

Sure, Pawlenty “can” insist on a budget with no new taxes, but that doesn’t mean he “should.” Doing so shows contempt for elected House and Senate Democrats and their opinions. That means it’s likely to result in a summerlong legislative war, one that could feature state employee furloughs, IOUs being issued instead of paychecks and maybe even a state government shutdown.

As California’s recent experience with exactly those traumas showed, that wouldn’t do anybody any good.

Contrast Pawlenty’s stance with the one called for by Rep. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka. Abeler’s willing to vote for a tax hike, but only in return for a serious and lasting concession on the Democrats’ part: Human-services spending reform.

Along with education, human-services spending is the biggest shovel digging Minnesota’s deficit hole, Abeler told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Health care spending in particular is wildly out of control. “If there are three people in a line, one with a nick on a finger, one with a broken arm and one who’s pouring blood from a leg, I have no hard time saying which is the neediest, and saying, we will only help two out of three,” Abeler said.

“DFL liberals are not practiced at that. They keep trying to find new people with needs, even during a recession.”

Tightening the rules could save $1 billion, Abeler said. If the tightening happens, he’ll support a tax increase; if it doesn’t, he won’t.

Pawlenty could cut such a deal, maybe even while insisting on public-school spending reforms to boot. But he didn’t, and now it’s an opportunity lost.

Of course, if Pawlenty’s own budget proposal offered a bold, new and streamlined way of conducting state business, maybe he’d be right in insisting on no new taxes.

His budget doesn’t do that, however. And that’s the second big difference between Pawlenty and the Democrats’ budget proposals.

The Democratic budgets, which blend tax hikes, spending cuts and federal stimulus income, balance the budgets not only for the upcoming two years but also beyond.

Pawlenty’s budget doesn’t. The governor proposes borrowing money in place of the Democrats’ tax hike. That means the deficit would disappear only temporarily; and when the candidates for governor campaign in 2010, they’d do so knowing that if they get elected, they’d face a $2.5 billion deficit right off the bat.

Pawlenty seems likely to be running for president, not governor, around then.

Compromise seems both reasonable and inevitable, given the Democrats’ strength in the Legislature. Considering that the session has little time left to run, Pawlenty should stop insisting and start negotiating in good faith.

— Tom Dennis for the Herald