A revelation came out of Washington last week: Congressman Tim Walz supports the public option for health care.  We have been asking our friends and neighbors this summer and fall if anyone had heard the Congressman’s position, and got the same, unsure response.  But it wasn’t until a Howard Dean political action group outed Walz that we knew his true feelings.

Seeing politicians stumble around answers and hide behind special interest groups is not a new thing.  It’s the old political “two-step”, saying one thing back home and voting another in Washington. While we as constituents should have known first and face to face, the political reality is that Walz’s position comes at odds with the district.  When that happens, you do the Walz Waltz: let someone else be the messenger and hope the voters forget.

It should come as no surprise that Congressman Walz is once again voting against southern Minnesota.  His political cues are clear and his desire to increase government will not be tamed.  This desire was most recently highlighted when Walz proclaimed his openness to a “soda-pop tax” (Rochester Post-Bulletin, Oct. 8, 2009).  Congressman Walz can’t find a tax he doesn’t like.

This was most revealing in his support of the Cap and Trade bill, aptly named the “energy tax”.  Independent projections keep rising, most recently pricing cap and trade as a $2,000 annual tax hike for the average family.  [Walz has claimed the cost is $175 per family per year but that CBO number is for managing the program, not the economic costs of living with it.] But our farm families in the First District are not considered “average”.  Even though they produce green fields and green energy, farmers will be taxed more for the energy used to plant and grow the world’s food supply.

Farmers are not the only ones seeing greater working challenges with each of Tim Walz’s votes.  Walz’s support of the so called “card check” affords that union leverage efforts on employees when asked to vote on unionization.  In the card check scheme, union bosses have more rights in looking over the shoulders of employees, so how many votes will be cast out of intimidation?

The freedom to let your vote truly be your own at the work place is disappearing, and we see Washington taking more and more control.  Tim Walz’s pop tax is the first example of the negative effects from the public option.  It has not even become law and politicians are already talking about taxing our food in the interest of health care.

My question is: what won’t be done in the interest of health care?  While Walz’s office would never give us a straight answer, his voting record speaks for itself.

Support for the public option really means government run health care.  This is a position opposed by almost everyone in the First District.  The Mayo Clinic, highlighted by President Obama as an example of quality and cost efficiency, is opposed to government run health care.  Our Minnesota Hospitals oppose it.  Most doctors say no to socialized medicine.  Our farmers and small business people also agree, Walz should stop waltzing and quit doing the old political two-step.

Even though the election is still a year away, I am confident that southern Minnesota will remember Tim Walz’s voting against their interests.  Families will remember Walz when they are paying a $2,000 energy tax so they can drive to work and heat their homes.  Our neighbors will remember Walz when they go to work and a Chicago-style union boss is standing over them to make sure they vote “the right way” on a union issue.  And, when America goes broke on the public option, and the government is entitled to intervene in every aspect of our personal lives, we all will remember Tim Walz.

It may be wise for Congressman Walz to be open to a ginkgo biloba tax instead of a pop tax.

Steve Perkins
Luverne, MN
507.920.3532

Mr.Perkins is the former Mayor of Pipestone and the Chair of the First Congressional District Republican Party of Minnesota.