Questions for DFL candidates for Governor

BY ED FELIEN

John Marty

Southside Pride asked four of the leading candidates for Governor what they thought about three critical policy issues: a single-payer health plan for Minnesota, public subsidy for a Viking stadium and solutions to the state fiscal deficit. Margaret Kelliher and R. T. Rybak did not respond. However, since both were active and public supporters of the billion dollar Hennepin County sales tax to support a Twins stadium, it could be assumed that they would support a similar subsidy for the Vikings.
State Senator John Marty will seek the DFL endorsement for Governor. Former U. S. Senator Mark Dayton will not seek the endorsement but will run in the DFL Primary.

John Marty:

I support single-payer. In fact, I am the author of the single-payer Minnesota Health Plan (MHP), which would address the health needs of people, keeping them healthy so they need less medical care, and delivering the health care in a rational, efficient, cost-effective manner. The MHP is a single, statewide plan that would cover all Minnesotans for all their medical needs including dental care, prescriptions, optometry, mental health, chemical dependency treatment, medical equipment and supplies like insulin, hospice, home care services, immunizations and preventive care, and nursing home care. Patients would be able to see the medical providers of their choice when they need care.

I have consistently opposed public funding to build sports facilities for privately owned, highly profitable sports teams. In fact, I was the lead opponent of public funding for the Twins stadium and of the current push for a Vikings stadium. I would resolve the current budget crisis with a variety of approaches: We need to look carefully for unnecessary expenditures to make cuts. However, as Governor, I would oppose cuts that will drive up costs in the long run, and oppose cuts that take away from our future. For example, cutting schools is a bad investment in the future. Cutting court budgets destroys democracy; cutting health care for sick people only makes them sicker.

We need to increase revenues. Nobody “likes” taxes, but they are like grocery bills—we need to pay them because of what we as a community get out of them. For taxes, we should rely primarily on a progressive state income tax. Republicans have been selling the line that taxes are a burden that takes money out of the economy. And DFLers have been afraid to stand up to them. Taxes would take money out of the economy if we would lock them in a box or burn the money. But, we are not locking them in a box, we are investing them in schools, and law enforcement, and public health—that’s not a burden on the economy—that is productive jobs with good wages that are stimulating the economy and strengthening communities. For revenues, I would raise the state income tax and make it more progressive. I have had the courage to stand up to the Taxpayers’ League before. In fact I was the only member of the Senate (64 -1) who voted against the biggest tax cuts in history, in 1999, and the only one in 2000 (65 -1). We need significant income tax increases, including some new higher brackets for high-income people.

Mark Dayton:

Mark Dayton

I will champion a single-payer health care system in Minnesota. United Health Care, the largest health insurance company in America, recently reported a quarterly profit of over $1 BILLION! That’s $1 billion in profits by not paying for people’s health care. Not coincidentally, the MN Department of Health recently reported that over 100,000 more Minnesotans lost their health insurance during the past two years. That’s 100,000 more reasons to have a state, single-payer health care system, where people, not profits, become our health care priority.

I certainly do not support the present proposal, whereby the people of Minnesota would spend over $900 million to build a stadium at taxpayer expense and turn it over to the Vikings to make millions of dollars in profits.

I would try to negotiate a deal that was in the public interest, in which the financial gains to the people of Minnesota—several thousand jobs for currently unemployed workers in the building trades; additional jobs for local sub-contractors and suppliers (including a strong minority business requirement; all of their increased tax revenues, etc.—exceeded the public cost, and where the facility was run by a public entity in the public interest. I would not support a project that is not in the public interest.

My priority for resolving the state’s budget crisis is to raise taxes on the rich and make Minnesota’s tax system progressive again.

According to Tim Pawlenty’s own Department of Revenue, the wealthiest 10 percent of Minnesotans pay only three-fourths of their proportionate share of state and local taxes, compared with everyone else.

The richest 1 percent pay only two-thirds. When the 30 richest households in Minnesota have a combined income greater than the 250,000 poorest households, you can see the enormous disparity in wealth in this state—and Tim Pawlenty, Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer want to protect that extremely regressive, unfair tax system at everyone else’s expense. If the richest Minnesotans paid only a flat tax, just the same percentage of their incomes in state and local taxes as the rest of Minnesotans, that would be an additional $3.8 billion in revenues for this biennium and over $4 billion for the next biennium. So, our state’s budget crisis is, first and foremost, a revenue crisis.