A new Health and Human Services budget agreement has officially passed the Minnesota Legislature, but not without drawing sharp, passionate criticism regarding its impact on the state’s most vulnerable residents. State Senator John Hoffman delivered a blistering floor speech, condemning a leadership agreement that slashes $300 million from human services over the biennium.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Hoffman, who chairs the Human Services Committee, expressed a “heavy heart” over the compromise. Although he acknowledged that the bill contains important provisions to protect nursing homes and strengthen program integrity, he warned that the deep financial cuts will disproportionately harm Minnesota’s disability community.
“We cannot ignore the painful truth embedded in this agreement,” Hoffman said. “The so-called leadership agreement between the House and the Senate cuts $300 million from human services over the biennium… cuts that cap and restrict services to some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable citizens: people with disabilities, families already struggling to access care, and individuals who depend upon these services not for convenience, Mr. President, but for survival, dignity, and participation in community life.”
A question of priorities
For disability advocates and individuals relying on waivered services, direct care, and community supports, the budget cuts represent another hurdle in a system already fraught with workforce shortages and waiting lists. Hoffman highlighted the stark contrast between the human services cuts and the funding legislative leadership managed to find for other priorities.
He pointedly noted that while people with disabilities face capped services, resources were somehow found for projects like studying and rehabilitating a hockey arena.
“That contradiction matters,” Hoffman said. “We cannot proclaim ourselves champions for people with disabilities during press conferences and community events, then quietly hand the human services committees in the House and Senate hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts and expect people not to notice. That is not authentic leadership.”
The moral test of government
Throughout his speech, Hoffman invoked the legacies of two of Minnesota’s most prominent political figures: former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and the late Senator Paul Wellstone.
Quoting Humphrey, Hoffman reminded his colleagues that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those that are in the dawn of life… the twilight of life, and the shadows of life.” Budgets, he emphasized, are not merely spreadsheets—they are “moral documents” that reveal a state’s true values and tell the public who matters and who does not.
He also channeled Wellstone’s famous mantra that “we all do better when we all do better,” reminding the chamber that “all of us” specifically includes people with disabilities, seniors, individuals with mental health challenges, and exhausted families navigating complex care systems.
The true cost of capping services As a lawmaker who has spent years confronting fraud and demanding accountability within human services programs, Hoffman did not dismiss the beneficial portions of the bill. However, he stressed that lawmakers cannot pretend this agreement arrived without grave consequences.
“There is a cost when we cap services. There is a cost when families lose support. There is a cost when providers are pushed further to the brink, and there is a cost when people with disabilities are told once again to wait,” Hoffman said.
Perhaps the greatest cost, he noted, is the erosion of public trust when politicians’ actions fail to match their rhetoric about compassion and inclusion.
“It is inauthentic to celebrate inclusion while reducing the very services that make inclusion possible,” Hoffman concluded, urging the state to return to the fundamental principle of protecting those with the least power. “Not because it’s politically convenient… but because it’s morally right.”
