True North

They’ll just raise more taxes, er, revenue

The Democrats promised to bring change and fiscal responsibility to St. Paul on the campaign trail in 2006, but it is clear they have gone in the other direction. Democrats have mismanaged the people’s money so badly that they are putting the state at great financial risk and what’s worse, they are forcing Minnesota’s citizens to pay for their mistakes. They’ve even gone so far as to remove voter approval for local Counties before they can raise your taxes. Taxation without representation.

The wish list of new and increased spending for the DFL is long and very expensive. You name the special interest, and the Democrats have given them more state money with no strings attached. They just throw more money at the same old problems. How do Democrats plan to pay for it? By raising YOUR taxes.

The state of Minnesota is collecting record amounts of revenue. Transportation is just the political football. DFL Legislators have more taxpayer dollars at their disposal then ever before. There is no good reason to raise taxes in order to provide the desperately needed funding for our roads and bridges, other than they blew their allowance already. The state has been collecting the money needed for transportation for decades they’ve just been squandering it away on just about everything but transportation.

Had they raised the gas tax last year or any year before that, it wouldn’t have kept the 35W bridge from collapsing. As tragic as it was, it was not the result of a lack of funding that caused that bridge to fall.

Democrat’s bonding requests are for narrowly focused yet incredibly expensive “transit” projects that stand to serve less than 5% of Minnesotans. Those  requests make up far-less-than half the billion dollars in this year’s bonding bill. Hundreds and hundreds of million dollars of their requests are for municipal welfare and higher ed handouts in the form of new buildings and community centers.  Meanwhile the bottlenecks and congested highways we all sit on everyday go unaddressed, unnoticed, unchanged, and unfunded. If Democrats really wanted to fix our roads, all they would need to do is put it at the top of the priority list ahead of the special interests.

Minnesotans work far too hard for their money already and now they will have to work even harder just to fund state government and have enough left over for themselves. If you want higher taxes; more government intrusion into your daily lives and personal finances; vote for the Democrats in November. Their record is clear. They will raise taxes higher and spend more money than any Republican will.

But will taxpayers get their money’s worth if they vote DFL? If you truly believe we can spend our way out of any problem, follow your heart, just hang on to your wallet. According to the DFL and media pundits, everything in Minnesota is in a crisis: Schools, roads, bridges, health care, you name it all of them are: “in crisis”. Well, who has controlled the Legislature and most of the bureaucratic realms of state government where the decisions are made that could have avoided those crises? DFLers and their Big labor public employee union constituents.

My recommendation to really solve the crises in Minnesota is to vote ‘for a real change’.  Vote to solve problems, not just bury them with more taxpayer money. Vote for your hard earned money and to keep more of it in your own bank account rather than in the state treasury. Vote to keep state and local tax collectors out of your wallet. Vote for accountability. Vote for a sustainable, free, and prosperous future. Vote Republican in November if you really want to see what real change looks like.