Politicians promise to do a lot of things for you.
They rarely tell you what they are going to do to you, and that is where the trouble starts.
Since she was elected, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has done this to you:
• Gas prices have jumped from $2.24 to $3.89 a gallon.
• Unemployment is up more than 75 percent.
• Long-term unemployment is up more than 220 percent.
• The national debt is up 90 percent.
• Debt held by China is up 190 percent.
• The budget deficit is up 700 percent.
• Home values are down by more than 20 percent.
• Household net worth is down 40 percent.
• Foreclosures are up 120 percent.
• Energy regulations are up 90 percent.
• Household income is down 6 percent.
• Bankruptcy filings are up 90 percent.
• The number of Minnesotans on food stamps is up 96 percent.
• And no federal budget has been passed in more than three years.
That’s not a record of which to be proud. Instead it reads like a bill of indictment. If a politician ran on a record that included this report card of “accomplishments,” you wouldn’t consider voting for him or her.
Well, that is Klobuchar’s record, and that is why I am running for U.S. Senate. I can’t stand by as our political leaders destroy our economy.
I am a high school economics teacher. For the past decade and a half I have been teaching my students at Rosemount High School the basics of how an economy works. A few years ago, I started noticing how anxious my students were as they watched our national debt climb and the American economy stall. One day, a student asked me, “What can we do about this?”
That was the day I decided I had to run for office. I got elected to the Rosemount City Council, then the Minnesota House of Representatives. And today, I am running for U.S. Senate.
I still teach my first-hour economics class. It reminds me why I am involved. Every day I leave the classroom knowing exactly who I am running for: my kids and my students.
I hear a lot of talk about how deadlocked the federal government is and the need for bipartisanship to break the stalemate.
Frankly, I couldn’t disagree more. When I look at Washington, D.C., I don’t see politicians doing too little but too much. They can’t agree on how to control spending by passing a budget (it has been more than three years since one has passed), but they can easily agree on increasing spending and the debt.
Spending has skyrocketed in the past six years. The number of federal regulations has jumped. The debt has jumped. The government took over one of the largest industries in the country, health care. The government now owns the largest car company in the world and sends billions of dollars to companies that go bankrupt almost immediately afterward. It stops mining and drilling and is now sending drones over farm fields to ensure compliance with agriculture regulations.
Politicians have to stop doing things to us, and get back to doing things for us.
Here in Minnesota there are a few things we can do to immediately get our economy moving. We need to reduce and streamline regulations to eliminate the delays that have plagued the PolyMet, Twin Metals and Franconia mining projects. Thousands of jobs are affected by these delays, hurting thousands of Minnesotans.
I support a one-project/one-review process such as is in place in Canada. It is just common sense to do all the review and permitting at one time instead of spreading the pain over many years.
We need to reign in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Sure, we need to protect the environment, but let’s not pretend a mine should be as clean as a garden.
We need to get spending under control. Politicians keep saying that increasing federal spending and the debt will somehow make us all rich. It hasn’t happened, won’t happen, and can’t happen because the only way economies grow is through private-sector investment that yields real returns and long-term jobs. As the federal government has grown, the economy has stalled.
Every morning I wake up and go to work, teaching my students basic economics. In return, they remind me how important it is that we get this economy growing again. That is why I am running.
