Last week’s
columns by Rep. Faust and Sen. Lourey
complained about a couple of issues that
deserve our attention. However, they skewed
the facts in a way that favored the
Democratic viewpoint. I could reciprocate by
setting forth my own partisan opinion, but I
would prefer to simply explain the facts and
allow people to make up their own minds.
The first
problem is with Lourey’s blame of the
governor for vetoing a bill that provided
state tax dollars to various communities. He
said the bill contained “no tax increases”
because it was called “property tax relief.”
A simple
contrast explains the difference between
Lourey and the Governor on this issue.
Republicans want lower taxes. To that end,
they want to put the power of taxation more
directly in the hands of local communities.
If, for example, Pine City prefers to have
lower taxes and fewer government services,
they’re free to make that happen by denying
local referendums that raise taxes. But if
Hinckley wants to have higher taxes and a
large local government, they can do that by
passing tax-raising referendums of their
own.
Republicans do
advocate for property tax relief when local
spending isn’t increasing. They will help
communities with vital services, but if
communities want to increase their spending,
they need to do so without using state
dollars.
Democrats want
higher taxes and more government services,
so they want to direct state funds to local
communities regardless of whether those
communities show spending restraint. They
propose local referendums to raise taxes for
projects that people view as being more
legitimate; Pine City’s referendum to expand
local education was an example of that.
They use their
positions in the Legislature to fund what
taxpayers would view as frivolous. Hence
they effectively make us deal with tax hikes
on two fronts. Democratic proposals for
“property tax relief” are really just
invisible tax expansions.
Tim Faust
pointed this out in writing, “It is unfair
that city, county and school leaders have
taken heat for property tax increases that
were forced by the Governor and past
legislators.” Tax increases are more
noticeable when they take place at the local
level, which is why Democrats would prefer
to fund them using the Legislature. When
Democrats complain about not having enough
“property tax relief,” it simply means they
want to raise more taxes from more sources,
but without anyone taking the blame for it.
Yes, Faust did
shape a bill regarding property tax relief.
It proposed Minnesota take on the highest
income tax rate in the nation, take the
money in 2007, and give it back as “tax
relief” in 2008. (This is how politics work;
you tax in the odd years and give it back in
election years.)
Republicans
proposed a 15% property tax reduction on all
property, and they proposed property tax
rebates for individuals. Faust voted against
both measures.
I’m not trying
to incriminate Faust here, I’m simply
pointing out the facts. Democrats support
local government aid as a means to raising
taxes. Republicans support local government
aid as a means to minimizing the tax burden.
Less expected of
Faust, however, was the second property tax
bill he talked about shaping, in which
thirty percent of money for local
governments went to St. Paul and
Minneapolis. It doesn’t matter how you look
at it, few people would have supported such
a bill. It shortchanges rural communities
and funds the waste of two very liberal,
monetarily wasteful cities.
One example that
comes to mind is education in the cities. It
costs roughly $5,000 more than in rural
areas to “educate” each student, yet their
test scores are among the lowest in the
state. This is the case for equalizing
education funding around the state; more
money doesn’t make for better education.
Yet this is one
of the campaign promises on which Faust ran
that still has not come true. It is
partially, though not entirely his fault;
Republicans and most rural legislators are
on his side. It is the fault of DFL
leadership for funding pork-barrel projects
for those cities rather than taking care of
the needs of the state. At least on property
tax issues, Faust is guilty of accommodating
them.
Back to home page
October 2007
To the editor:
A letter from
Representative Tim Faust recently appeared
in some area newspapers talking about his
plans for the next legislative session. I
think it’s interesting that he wants to talk
about the future instead of the past.
Before he ran
for office, Tim Faust had never been
politically involved. (This is according to
the Politics in Minnesota Directory, in
which he provided his own biography.) It was
only after he quit his last job that he
decided to become involved. Once he did, he
spent the entire time running for office.
Now, the Minnesota House Directory lists his
job as “legislator.”
Ask him what
he’s accomplished since he took office.
Whatever his response, it will amount to “I
raised taxes.” (The Politics in Minnesota
Directory even says that when someone asks
him to lower taxes, he points to a picture
of a deserted town and says that is what
will result.) So what has he raised taxes
for?
One was his “per
diem.” A per diem is what legislators
supposedly get to cover the cost of their
food, so what they get depends on what they
report they need. Tim Faust took $8,908 in
per diem to cover about seventy days of time
spent working. That amounted to $120 per
day. I spend $10 or $20 on food every day.
Rep. Faust either has an eating disorder,
he’s misreporting his expenses, or he’s
eating at places that are priced far above
anything that ordinary people patronize. I
can eat at McDonald’s for $10 per day.
And then Faust
voted for House Journal bill 7575, which was
eventually vetoed by the governor. This bill
would have increased welfare to local
governments, thereby increasing spending,
and it would have mandated regular spending
increases.
When the
legislative session was finally over he
spoke to a rally full of homosexuals and, as
another local writer pointed out, people
from the Man-Boy Love Association.
Faust has no
political experience and he doesn’t have
many goals, but he has enjoyed being in
office. And he has made no attempt to do
what he said he would do. He promised to
equalize education spending so that we
receive as much as schools in the cities do.
He hasn’t done that. Like I said, ask him to
name what he’s done for the people. He won’t
be able to come up with a single thing that
didn’t amount to voting for someone else’s
proposal to increase taxes.
Speeches are
fun, and the perks of being an elected
politician are nice. But they are not the
reasons we put people in office. I realize
that he needs a job, but that isn’t what
political office is for.
Back to home page
Editor, Pine
City
Pioneer:
June 2007
I find Tim
Faust’s comments (In the June 7th
Pioneer) about the end of the legislative
session laughable. While he claims that
Republicans were trying to run out the
clock, it is just as obvious to anyone
watching the final moments of the session
(and it’s available at
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/htv/archivesHFS.asp?ls_year=85
May 21, 2007,
part 4), that the Democrats were stifling
the minority and not letting them debate
bills. In fact most House members were
voting on a tax bill without having had time
to review the bill, or know what was in it.
Democrats didn’t allow debate, nor did they
allow any questions to be asked.
Although Faust
accuses Republicans of trying to run out the
clock, I think he needs to explain why his
party bosses waited until the final thirty
minutes of the session to try to override
the Governor’s veto on the transportation
finance bill. It seems the Democrats were
content to pass a “lights on”, bare-bones
bill and try to blame the governor for not
funding more roads and bridges.
Democrats punted
away property tax relief because they
insisted on putting state government
finances on auto-pilot, which they knew the
Governor would veto.
The education
bill was dismal at best, with inner city
districts once again coming out the big
winners at the expense of districts in our
local area.
Faust was
quoted as saying, “We got it done anyway . .
.” Got what done? Rep. Faust and Sen. Lourey
saying that finishing on time was success in
itself speaks volumes. Turns out it wasn’t
the Republicans running out the clock, it
was Denny Green-like time mismanagement by
the DFL. Finishing on time was more
important to Democrat legislators that
property tax relief.
Maybe they
should have taken a few extra weeks and
tried to achieve some real results.
Back to home page
April 2008
On Saturday,
March 8th, Minnesota’s Democratic
Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller made
the comment, "I think it's simplistic and
naive to say people can spend their money
better than the government… The notion that
everybody can individually spend their money
better than government I, I just think is
trite, wrongheaded and anti-democratic."
As the public
spokesman for Democratic legislators in
Minnesota, Sen. Pogemiller was speaking on
behalf of our own Rep. Tim Faust and Sen.
Tony Lourey. It’s why increasing taxes has
been the number one item on the
Legislature’s agenda this session. And it is
also why, in reading Rep. Faust’s recent
commentary, he didn’t say anything that a
normal member of the public would be able to
understand. What Faust had to say wasn’t
appealing, and for legislators, the purpose
of writing is not to inform the public. It
is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor
reasoning, and inhibit clarity.
Let’s start out
with the most easy to understand point in
his article. In the first paragraph, he
claimed that education funding was “cut” in
2003. That was a flat-out lie. According to
the Minnesota Department of Education,
funding for schools consisted of $5.724
billion in fiscal year 2002; $6.006 billion
in FY 2003; $6.104 billion in FY 2004 and
$6.189 billion in FY 2005.
If you look at
numbers set forward by the non-partisan
House Fiscal Analysis Department, average
revenue taken in per student rose from
$9,381 in 2002 to $9,996 in 2003. It rose to
$10,353 in 2004. These latter numbers are
available at
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/fiscal/files/06edrevhist.pdf.
Either Faust is
downright ignorant of the facts, or he’s
hoping that by repeating a lie often enough,
people will believe it. At best, it was a
stunning error for a state legislator to get
such a basic fact wrong. At worst, it was a
morally despicable attempt to misinform his
constituents.
He goes on to
say that, because the state is facing a $1
billion deficit, he wants to use the state’s
budget reserve for another increase in
funding for education. I’ll give him credit
for at least admitting here to what he wants
to do, which is spend money the government
doesn’t have. For that reason, we can expect
the deficit to keep increasing into 2009 and
2010. Because the reserves aren’t going to
last that long, it will be interesting to
see how the Legislature digs itself out of
the hole that legislators like Tim Faust are
putting it in.
Near the end of
his letter, Faust brings up the “Education
Reform Task Force,” which he takes credit
for creating. (After all, Democrats are
great innovators. Remember, it was Al Gore
who invented the internet.) Unsurprisingly,
Faust’s committee found that he was right
all along. The way to improve education is
by increasing Local Government Aid (LGA),
also known as “welfare,” and not through
local referendums. That way, people can’t
vote on whether or not to raise their own
taxes.
Faust doesn’t
want school funding to be connected to
property taxes, because he doesn’t have as
much control over your property taxes.
I’ll agree with
him that quality of education is important.
However, we have different definitions of
what constitutes quality of education. I
believe it has more to do with knowledge
acquired while in school. Faust believes it
has to do with the rate of graduation, which
is a statistic that state governments
manipulate and inflate to varying degrees.
If he really cared about quality of
education, he’d oversee substantive reforms.
But for Faust,
this isn’t about education. It’s about
raising taxes, because as Sen. Pogemiller
stated, the notion that individuals are more
entitled to their money than the government
is “simplistic and naďve… trite, wrongheaded
and anti-democratic.” Faust is using
education as an excuse to raise taxes,
because no one wants to look like they
oppose “the children” by opposing new taxes.
I’ll also agree
with Faust that tough choices are in order
for balancing our budget deficit. But he
should not need to rally support for those
choices by lying to the public about what he
wants do, and especially not by lying about
the facts.
