Independence Minnesota

SD 26 - Special ELECTION January 26th - ELECT ROY SRP!!!

Delegates from the Independence Party of Minnesota's Senate District 26 voted unanimously on December 30 to endorse Waseca Mayor Roy Srp as the Party's candidate for the State Senate special election on January 26.

Brian Faas, IP Chair of CD2 issued a written statement that, "Delegates recognized Roy's long history as a member of the IP and were clearly impressed with his leadership in the city of Waseca. He gets the job done and has the city's balanced budget without any tax increases to prove it. Roy's opponents have no similar record to stand on." Faas continued, "His no-nonsense style is exactly what Minnesotans want from their lawmakers."

Srp added, "I'm proud of the endorsement from the party and will continue to stand by their principle of fiscal responsibility. Minnesota has a legislature that's forgotten how to live within its means, so I intend to work with both Democrats and Republicans to make sure that promises for solutions are delivered."

Let's do everything we can to elect a proud and longstanding member of the IP to serve as a state senator in St. Paul.  Tell all your friends in Waseca, Faribault, Owatonna and the surrounding area to vote for Roy Srp - No Vowels.  No Nonsense.  It's about time!

Congressional District 2   -   WELCOME!

The focus of our Party is to bring Minnesota politics back to pressing issues, including health care, education, transportation, environmental preservation and economic factors, such as dependency on foreign oil. We stand for government and political leadership that serves the highest long-term interests of our state and oppose partisan politics based solely on self-interest, extremism, or special interests.

This page is dedicated to independent minded citizens who live and work in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District and who long to bring politics back from the extremes. Our district covers the southern Twin Cities metropolitan area and contains all of Carver, Scott, Le Sueur, Goodhue and Rice Counties. It also contains much of Dakota County and a smaller section of Washington County.

We are always looking for new members. Please join us if you are disenfranchised from one of the other political parties.  You will be welcome here!

Featured ARTICLE

The Coming Deficit Disaster

Editor's Note: While most of us would agree that the #1 economic issue before us is job creation, the need for which is primarily a short-term one.  The longer-term implications of all of this government stimulus are rather frightening.  As we contemplate adding a massive new entitlement program, in the form of a public health care insurance "option", we should be wary of what huge systemic deficits will do to our economy in the future.

Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin is a highly respected economist, and the former director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.  The following article was printed in the Nov. 21st edition of the Wall Street Journal, and adapted from testimony he gave before the Senate Committee on the Budget on Nov. 10.



President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures.

Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.

Going forward, there is no relief in sight, as spending far outpaces revenues and the federal budget is projected to be in enormous deficit every year. Our national debt is projected to stand at $17.1 trillion 10 years from now, or over $50,000 per American. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) analysis of the president's budget, the budget deficit will still be roughly $1 trillion, even though the economic situation will have improved and revenues will be above historical norms.

The planned deficits will have destructive consequences for both fairness and economic growth. They will force upon our children and grandchildren the bill for our overconsumption. Federal deficits will crowd out domestic investment in physical capital, human capital, and technologies that increase potential GDP and the standard of living. Financing deficits could crowd out exports and harm our international competitiveness, as we can already see happening with the large borrowing we are doing from competitors like China.

At what point, some financial analysts ask, do rating agencies downgrade the United States? When do lenders price additional risk to federal borrowing, leading to a damaging spike in interest rates? How quickly will international investors flee the dollar for a new reserve currency? And how will the resulting higher interest rates, diminished dollar, higher inflation, and economic distress manifest itself? Given the president's recent reception in China—friendly but fruitless—these answers may come sooner than any of us would like.

Mr. Obama and his advisers say they understand these concerns, but the administration's policy choices are the equivalent of steering the economy toward an iceberg. Perhaps the most vivid example of sending the wrong message to international capital markets are the health-care reform bills—one that passed the House earlier this month and another under consideration in the Senate. Whatever their good intentions, they have too many flaws to be defensible.

First and foremost, neither bends the health-cost curve downward. The CBO found that the House bill fails to reduce the pace of health-care spending growth. An audit of the bill by Richard Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, found that the pace of national health-care spending will increase by 2.1% over 10 years, or by about $750 billion. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bill grows just as fast as the House version. In this way, the bills betray the basic promise of health-care reform: providing quality care at lower cost.

Second, each bill sets up a new entitlement program that grows at 8% annually as far as the eye can see—faster than the economy will grow, faster than tax revenues will grow, and just as fast as the already-broken Medicare and Medicaid programs. They also create a second new entitlement program, a federally run, long-term-care insurance plan.

Finally, the bills are fiscally dishonest, using every budget gimmick and trick in the book: Leave out inconvenient spending, back-load spending to disguise the true scale, front-load tax revenues, let inflation push up tax revenues, promise spending cuts to doctors and hospitals that have no record of materializing, and so on.

If there really are savings to be found in Medicare, those savings should be directed toward deficit reduction and preserving Medicare, not to financing huge new entitlement programs. Getting long-term budgets under control is hard enough today. The job will be nearly impossible with a slew of new entitlements in place.

In short, any combination of what is moving through Congress is economically dangerous and invites the rapid acceleration of a debt crisis. It is a dramatic statement to financial markets that the federal government does not understand that it must get its fiscal house in order.

What to do? The best option would be for the president to halt Congress's rush to fiscal suicide, and refocus on slowing the dangerous growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He should call on Congress to pass a comprehensive reform of our income and payroll tax systems that would generate revenue sufficient to fund its spending desires in a pro-growth and fair fashion.

Reducing entitlement spending and closing tax loopholes to create a fairer tax system with more balanced revenues is politically difficult and requires sacrifice. But we will avert a potentially devastating credit crisis, increase national savings, drive productivity and wage growth, and enhance our international competitiveness.

The time to worry about the deficit is not next year, but now. There is no time to waste.

Click here to download the full text of Dr. Holtz-Eakin's testimony (PDF file).

ARTICLES WRITTEN BY CD-2 AUTHORS

Remind Our Representatives Who They Work For!

Posted 6/1/09
By Bill Wilcox - Burnsville

President Obama signed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 the other day. People may differ over whether the new law goes far enough to protect consumers against credit card companies. Nevertheless, it is nice to see our politicians actually agreeing for a change in an overwhelming bipartisan vote to create some reforms in how the credit card companies deal with their customers. A 357 to 70 vote in the house and a 90 to 5 vote in the Senate is truly an impressive display of bipartisanship. It shows broad support for taxpayers in a difficult economy. While I am frequently a critic of politicians in Washington, I applaud Congress on this vote.

While reading a little further on the new law, a startling fact appeared. Two members of the Minnesota Congressional delegation actually voted against the law when it came up for a vote in the House of Representatives on April 30^th. Minnesotans in CD2 and CD6 will be ashamed to find out that the people they sent to Washington as their representatives in Congress actually took this opportunity to side with the credit card companies. John Kline and Michele Bachmann were the only Minnesotans to vote against the law.

"Credit Card Bill of Rights" continued...
 

Earlier Articles By CD2 Authors

• 2009 Dakota County Fair Recap & Bean Poll Results
• Foreclosure Crisis - A Judicial Solution - Brian Faas
• A 4.8 billion $ "Opportunity" - Colin Lee
• Getting our Financial House in Order - Bill Wilcox
• Black Gold for Fool's Gold - Colin Lee
• Pondering the Future of the "Big Three" - Brian Faas