EXCERPT:
WALZ: “I want to say this damage is still being assessed, but we do know, and you're going to hear from some folks, you're going to hear from Henry, you'll hear from Commissioner Varilek, about where we're at on the front end of this, and we're going to be proposing a reinstitution of our small business emergency fund. It's what we used very successfully during Covid in the recovery, in the economic recovery that we saw in Minnesota that outpaced most of the rest of the country. We're going to be proposing a first-time $10 million one-time targeted loans, forgivable loans, that we know, and I want to be very clear, is a very small piece of this, but what I am going to challenge as we get ready to start here in a few days, the legislative session, this legislative session needs to be about recovery of the damage that's been done to us. I am also asking our team, and I'm going to make appeals to our federal delegation, the federal government needs to pay for what they broke here. There are going to be accountability on the things that happened, but one of the things is the incredible and immense costs that were borne by the people of this state. The federal government needs to be responsible. You don't get to break things and then just leave without doing something about it.”