A New Direction for Minnesota

Cutting Taxes and Spending, and Creating Jobs

For 30 years, Minnesota’s tax burden has consistently been among that nation’s highest, we’re burdened with high property taxes and our unemployment is now the highest it has ever been. More than 214,000 Minnesotans are unemployed. Never before has the number of unemployed topped 200,000 people. And the loss of those jobs means people, ... families…, are losing their homes. Minnesota’s home foreclosure rate is now the highest it has been in the last six quarters.

This shocks us, especially in Carver County, where hard work and small business are our lifeblood. But the state’s overreaching government has choked our top employers, striking businesses like the Young America Corporation, Chaska’s global technology companies FSI and Entegris, and historic Minnesota companies like 3M and Honeywell.

In the wake of all this, it was mind-boggling to watch the last Legislative session. The Democrats in St. Paul went on to vote to increase our income taxes and impose a surtax on certain interest income. The Democrat endorsed candidate for governor, - supported by the Union-backed Democrat running to take this district, - voted to raise taxes by $6.6 billion, along with a gas tax, an excise tax, a car license tax, and a constitutional amendment to raise the sales tax. Just two weeks ago the Democrat legislature passed a new top tax rate of 9.1 percent for couples and small businesses earning more than $200,000 a year. We’d be at a breaking point, without Governor Pawlenty’s veto of this tax rate. 

Forced into a special session by the state’s Constitution, which requires lawmakers to balance the budget,  Democrats finally relented to ratify the Governor’s un-allotments and hold spending to the status quo for the next 14 months. But they just couldn’t help themselves from spending, so they borrowed $2 billion from our school districts in order to pay for their nonstop spending and left huge deficits that won’t be resolved until 2011.

That spending included some very questionable projects: Rochester got $4 million in bonding money to expand an amateur volleyball facility and Como Park Zoo $11 million for a new gorilla exhibit. 

We will not accept this “tax, borrow and spend our way along” as our path. Our path is very different. The money they spend is ours. So, we’ll solve our state’s government problem by getting it out of our wallets.

As a business owner and employer, I know what managers face in order to have strong paying jobs to offer, make payroll and keep a concern running ... especially these days. We have to run lean, be nimble and stay true to our business. And, it is absolutely no different for our state government. We must dig ourselves out of the mess the Democrats have made and make government smaller, more effective and efficient. It has to get out of the way and leave us alone so that we can prosper. Removing mandates and streamlining permitting will encourage businesses to stay and will buttress the private initiative that has always flourished in Carver County and throughout Minnesota.