Tea Party activists are reacting with alarm to Rep. Erik Paulsen’s comments suggesting that he would be willing to break with GOP House leadership in order to end the federal government shutdown.

When the State Fair opens on Thursday, the usual diversions will undoubtedly be foremost on visitors’ minds. But the more than one million people expected to attend the annual gathering will also be targeted with marketing efforts surrounding the looming rollout of the state’s new health insurance marketplace, known as MNsure.

January is generally not the time of year for four-hour committee hearings at the Capitol. But Wednesday’s gathering of the House Commerce and Consumer Protection Finance and Policy Committee nearly reached that dubious mark.

The budget released by Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration on Tuesday proposes to spend $37.9 billion over the next two years. That figure represents a 6 percent increase over the $35.7 billion deal ultimately reached with a Republican-controlled Legislature following the 2011 state government shutdown.

Legislation to establish an insurance marketplace for an estimated 1.3 million state residents cleared its first hurdle on Wednesday. The health care exchange bill passed out of the Senate Committee on State and Local Government on a 7-5 party-line vote.

Obamacare is here to stay. That is the apparent takeaway from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that largely upheld the 2010 federal health care overhaul.