The Minnesotan most likely to be served cold coffee, runny eggs and undercooked meat is both backtracking from and sticking by his comments about tips and the minimum wage.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer angered restaurant servers from Askov to Zimmerman on July 5 when he voiced his support for what's known as the tip credit - giving restaurant owners the option of paying tipped employees less than the minimum wage.

"With the tips that they get to take home, there are some people earning over $100,000 a year," Emmer said at a campaign event in St. Paul.

When that comment drew derision and ridicule, Emmer's spokesman Bill Walsh said it was inaccurate to say that Emmer claimed servers were making more than $100,000.

"The owner of the bar said that to Tom and the reporters covering the event; Tom just repeated it," Walsh said, although tapes of the event showed Emmer stating it as a fact.

State figures show the median wage for wait staff is

$9.65 per hour, which translates to $19,500 per year for a full-time worker. Only 10 percent of servers in Minnesota report earning more than $17.64 per hour or $37,000 per year.

Walsh also said that Emmer never said he wanted to cut pay for waiters and waitresses. In a lengthy press release sent out a week after the initial campaign event, the Emmer campaign said their candidate was talking about applying a tip credit to any future increases to the minimum wage, not cutting the current minimum wage.

Emmer certainly isn't the first Republican to propose a tip credit.

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce has long supported the idea, and it's law in 43 other states. The Independence Party's endorsed candidate for governor Tom Horner also supports it, as does Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

But, until Emmer spoke out, the minimum wage was not an issue in the campaign. In the days since he made his remarks, DFL-endorsed candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher has called for raising Minnesota's minimum wage by $1.50 per hour. That's not likely to be popular with many employers, but you can bet that Kelliher gets faster service and better food in restaurants as she travels around the state than Emmer does.

Who is the biggest spender?

Whose money is it that we don't have but are spending anyway?

Voters might be left with that puzzling question after Gov. Tim Pawlenty's latest visit to sort of campaign for president in New Hampshire.

The governor maintains that he hasn't made up his mind about a run yet, but at a Republican picnic on July 11, Pawlenty repeated his criticism of President Barack Obama for what the governor called out-of-control federal spending.

"We now have people running the United States of America who have no regard for financial limits, no regard for financial discipline," Pawlenty said. "We need to bring this country back into financial responsibility and financial balance. We have to live within our means."

Democratic National Committee spokesman Frank Benenati accused Pawlenty of being a hypocrite for criticizing federal spending while using federal stimulus to fix Minnesota's budget.

"He's rallied against the recovery act while he's used a third of it to balance his own budget," Benenati said. "And so as he continues to hit the president, as he continues to pander to the right wing, we're going to call him out for it."

Pawlenty responded that Minnesota pays more money to the federal government than it gets back. The stimulus money Minnesota received, Pawlenty maintains, is Minnesota's money.

So is it OK for the federal government to spend money it doesn't have on states that pay more in than they get back?

And how much of Minne-sota's money is going for things the government can't afford but that people still want - like Medicare or Social Security?

You have until 2012 to think about it.