Modernize Our Tax System

Minnesota has a budget imbalance that goes back to 2001.  At that time, due to a  strong national and state economy, Minnesota leaders decided to cut taxes at the same time that we increased the  State’s portion of K-12 spending.  As we now know, the level of growth taking place in 2000 was not sustainable long-term.  We haven’t been willing to fix this imbalance and we keep cutting state spending while the governor claims we have no new taxes.  Have you looked at your property tax bill lately?!? We have lots of new taxes!  We need to modernize our tax code and make sure it is progressive and fair so that our income taxes are based on your earnings and we stop putting the burden on regressive property taxes that have nothing to do with your wealth.

We have been aware for many years that this gross imbalance is occurring, but our Governor has not been willing to fix this and we keep cutting state spending while the governor claims we have no need to recalibrate our tax brackets to fit the times.

Nobody likes taxes. But we all tolerate taxes when they are fair and we use the revenue for our schools, roads, snow removal, fire protection, cops and courts, public nursing homes, and colleges and universities.  These are the pieces that sustain Minnesotans across our state.  Without them, our quality of daily life would be reduced.

No Back Door Taxes

Unfair taxes are rightly condemned.  Everyone should pay their fair share!  That is something that has fallen by the wayside in the last decade.  At the end of the legislative session this year, with terrible budget cuts looming for low and middle income families, the DFL tried to raise the income tax rates on the richest families in the state. The increase would have cost a family making more than $300,000 a year about $180.  But the Governor vetoed the bill saying this would hurt those families too much.  Then he turned around and “unalloted” 25% of the renters’ credit which goes mostly to moderate income families.  An average senior living in an apartment on a fixed income is going to lose $140 a year.  Somehow Pawlenty doesn’t think that pain is too great.  How can we treat Minnesotans so unfairly?!

Governor Pawlenty has repeatedly said, “No new taxes”!   Sometimes the Governor wants to call them fees, but if it comes out of your family’s wallet, it is a tax to me!   We need to modernize our tax code and make sure it is fair and  reasonable for Minnesota’s hardworking, middle class.

As Governor, I will pledge to stop putting an unfair burden on our middle class families.  I pledge to fight against the current, backdoor taxes that are smothering Minnesota’s middle class.  I promise that, as Governor, I will work every day toward a fair system of taxation that helps grow a Minnesotan’s quality of life.

Any veteran who puts his or her life on the line for this country deserves to be taken care of upon return.  In partnership with the federal government, Minnesota must ensure that any medical and educational needs that veterans have are met and that their ability to reintegrate as productive citizens of the state is improved.

My father and uncles were veterans and I was raised to hold military service to our country in the highest regard.  I began to work on veterans’ issues such as property tax relief early in my legislative career and continue to do so today.  Minnesota has a good record in providing service and benefits, but there is more that we can do.

Veterans Need Preventative Health Care Upon Return

This year a constituent of mine brought terrible news that her son had returned safely from Iraq only to kill himself because of the horrendous mental health problems he was experiencing.  He couldn’t get the help he so desperately needed.  I passed legislation this session to try to prevent such tragedies in the future by helping to ease reintegration.  It requires that upon return from combat, National Guard members will be provided with complete mental and physical health screening to help them identify and receive assistance for any health problems or injuries.

We need to identify other weaknesses in our policies toward veterans and work to address them.  Nothing is too good for our vets.

Minnesota is a beautiful state and we should treasure the lakes, streams, wood, wetlands, and prairies that we are blessed with.  We need to clean up and protect those vital resources that set us apart from most other states.  I’ve been an organic gardener for most of my adult life (60+ tomato plants and sweet corn that’s always knee high on the 4^th or July!) but going green doesn’t just mean protecting our beautiful resources or eating local food.  It means growing a green economy, energy and jobs.

As one example, consider Minnesota’s tourism industry:  Though we are very proud of all the recreational opportunities we as Minnesotans have at our fingertips, we need to be very honest about a grave reality:  Minnesota’s tourism industry is suffering badly.  Resort owners around the state, especially small family operations, are going out of business and the state is doing little to help them. At the same time, a treasure we are failing to discover and invest in is the emerging field of “green tourism.”  What better place to build this trend than beautiful Minnesota?  The state needs to promote tourism and rebuild the resort industry in the many areas of the state blessed with rare natural resources. Such investments in “green tourism” would be a boon to state revenues and to the economic well-being of these regions.  This example could be one of many sustainable industries for Minnesota’s future.

We also need to come together and focus our efforts on clean energy production. In Minnesota we are blessed with abundant sunshine, wind and biomass.  We know we need to invest in increased power generation, but paradoxically we are spending our resources to support out-of-state coal production.  While coal certainly is cleaner than it once was, it isn’t the answer for Minnesota.  Minnesota can promote the creation of clean energy, improve regional economic development, and support local governments by supporting the cost of building small municipal power plants fueled by clean natural fuels such as biomass, wind, and solar power.  These plants would provide affordable power and employ local workers to build them and operate them.  They could be owned as cooperatives with local farmers and provide affordable power based on the best source for that region of the state.

As for nuclear energy, I will not support the construction of new nuclear power plants in Minnesota until a safe, permanent solution is found for the storage of nuclear waste.

As Governor, I would be the leader Minnesota needs and deserves to both create jobs and secure a clean environment for Minnesota’s future.

The cost of health insurance is creating an unmanageable burden for businesses and a nightmare for families who can’t afford to get sick.  We can’t afford the “cost savings” that managed care and insurance conglomerates provide from their skyscrapers and elegant offices.  It’s time to step in and make sure everyone has health care that they can manage.

Health insurance and drug companies that make huge profits by rationing care want you to believe that “the government” shouldn’t involve itself in health care coverage.  They argue that the private sector is more “efficient,” but the wide spread support and success of Medicare for our seniors prove that we can create a competitive and efficient health care system.  If the cost of the program is directed to providing expanded services instead of expanded profits we could provide health care to all Minnesotans.

The problem with the single payer model is trying to do this in isolation from the rest of the country.  But while we work on getting the necessary changes from Congress, we can’t sit idly by. We need to protect the programs that we have in place including MinnesotaCare for working families of moderate means and the safety net programs for low income individuals who cannot pay for care and would otherwise be forced to use much more costly emergency rooms.

We can expand our current, affordable programs to be certain that no child and no senior goes without the care they need and deserve.  We can include others for whom health coverage is unaffordable such as small business owners trying to insure their workers.  These expansions are affordable if we use cost savings from making the system more efficient – keeping all but the true emergencies out of emergency rooms, for example.

We also need to ensure that people without adequate coverage can get the prescriptions they need.  I passed legislation to allow people in these circumstances to be able to access the state purchasing system that we use to acquire medicine for people in state facilities, but the executive branch never implemented it.  It isn’t a perfect solution, but it would bring uninsured consumers’ costs down significantly. Health care is the most basic of rights that no Minnesotan should have to go without. We must all find a way to make that happen.

Not too long ago, states across the nation pointed to Minnesota as a model in education. We were consistently ranked as one of the top states in the nation for educating our children. What happened? We stopped encouraging real education and began falling in the trap of testing, testing, testing. We absolutely must return to a state that adequately funds our schools. We must stop putting all our efforts into believing that testing alone will improve and foster the skills our kids need in today’s fast-paced, global marketplace. Forcing our teachers to concentrate only on how many students pass a standardized test takes away much of the value of teaching – helping students to learn to love learning, to be good thinkers, to be good citizens, to be creative and entrepreneurial.

How do we return to Minnesota’s rightful place as a nation leader in quality, cost-effective education? First we need to start appreciating what our teachers do and give them what they need – reasonable class sizes and materials and resources to do the job. Then we need to get out of the way. We have dedicated so much of our time and money to criticism and “reform” that we haven’t supported what teachers and students can do. Let’s support our teachers and schools, remove the testing requirements that are not effective, eliminate the time-consuming, unproductive mandates, and invest resources for our students and teachers in the classrooms across Minnesota.

As did many Minnesota leaders who have come before us, we, as a state, must commit to making the decisions necessary to invest in a solid education for all of Minnesota’s children – our most important resource! A good education shouldn’t depend on where you live, how much money you make, or whether your kids are gifted test-takers. It is the birthright of every Minnesotan.Hard-working Minnesotans deserve decent, good-paying jobs. But, many of these jobs require higher education and with the tuition increases Minnesota has experienced, that’s getting hard for everyone, especially middle class families, to afford.  In the Minnesota House, I am the chairman of the Committee on Higher Education and Workforce Development.  That’s a useful combination because as important as education is for its own sake, most people go to college to get a good job.  So we need strong, affordable public colleges and enough decent jobs to go around.

Historically, Minnesota leaders have made sure that middle class families could afford to send their kids to college.  In the past, for adults who needed to build a new career or improve their skills, Minnesota leaders made it possible to go back to school without putting their future earnings in hock for years to come.  Not any longer.  For the past several years, Minnesota’s governor and his executive branch have abandoned its commitment to public higher education.  Though our laws say that the state will pay 2/3 of the cost of instruction at a public college while tuition covers 1/3, under Pawlenty’s “No New Tax” pledge, we have flip-flopped those percentages so today the state only pays about 1/3 in many of our public institutions, thus leaving students and families to cover 2/3 with their tuition and fees.

What can we do?  We need to give students and families better options for financing their education.  When I was in college I could work my way through school at minimum wage working about 15 hours a week.  Students now would need to work over 60 hours a week to pay their way.  A program that would give students the option of working as tutors, mentors, or advisors to other students; assistants to faculty in exchange for college credits; or, alternatively, a state service program along the lines of Americorps in which students could have loans forgiven after college through community service would allow a new generation to work their way through or embark upon their adult life with little debt.

But how do we make sure that our college students have jobs when they graduate?  That takes significant change.  We have to support Minnesota businesses and efforts by Minnesotans to start and expand businesses.  We have to increase the state’s investment in research at our higher education campuses in fields such as bioscience that can improve people’s health and quality of life and through  the use of our Minnesota resources develop the future of energy and green technologies.

We must then ensure that Minnesota companies have the opportunity to be part of the manufacturing and production of the outcomes of those research efforts.

To recapture all of Minnesotans’ countless opportunities, we must support our higher education students – our future! — by making college affordable and creating the future workforce that will allow Minnesota to reemerge on the national stage as the educational and economic leader that it is.

Minnesota’s strong economy, historically, has been dependent on our rural farmers, farm communities, and agri-businesses. Today, agriculture accounts for over 20% of Minnesota’s Gross Domestic Product. One of every five Minnesota jobs is related to agriculture. I am from rural Minnesota and I’m dedicated to supporting rural communities and the farm economy.

Farmers: Minnesota’s rural backbone

I also understand the importance of farmers’ contributions to the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. The families that live on our farms and produce wealth from the land are the backbone of rural areas in our state. Whether it be a small organic vegetable producer, a Red River Valley sugar beet grower, or a dairy farmer milking cows twice a day, it is our charge to make sure these farmers can make a living and continue to benefit our entire state.

The future of energy

There also is a changing landscape across Minnesota as we consider our energy future. Minnesota has proudly led the nation in the development of biofuels. Our famer-owned cooperatives have served as national models. I want Minnesota to build on this success and lead our country in the development of the next generation of fuels. For the first time in decades, a strong agriculture based energy sector could produce rural jobs and economic growth. Stability for our rural communities will come from producing power from wind, prairie grasses, wood waste, corn cobs, or solar energy because most of these activities will take place in rural Minnesota.

I intend to advance these issues and lead Minnesota’s rural economy investments:

Support funding for the ‘Ag Special’ to our state’s Land Grant University, the University of Minnesota, providing for research and development in agriculture related activities and businesses
Increase focus on the “Buy Local” concept of food production by supporting the MN Grown program, sustainable farming practices, and assistance to smaller producers
Promote a strong animal agriculture sector so vital to our state and to the success of a diverse agriculture economy
Grow our alternative energy economy
Ensure basic agricultural production remains a strong and vital rural economic engine
Recognize that every citizen living in rural Minnesota has a right to have equal access to healthcare, education, good paying jobs, safe roads, and 21st century telecommunications