We should know not to check our email before we head out the door. The Hill's Jonathan Kaplan has written up the story of Tim Walz's fight to keep combat pay and benefits for Minnesota National Guard soldiers headed to Kosovo:
As a command sergeant major in the National Guard, Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) could not stop the Pentagon from proposing to strip combat pay and tax breaks for U.S. forces in Kosovo.
But as a freshman lawmaker, Walz now has the power to influence both foreign policy and local politics. By pressing the Pentagon to quash a proposal to downgrade the combat status of U.S. troops in Kosovo, Walz looks to alter the political situation in Kosovo — the former Serbian province itching for independence — while staving off potential financial repercussions for 400 Minnesota National Guardsmen who could be deployed there in the fall. . . .
. . .Walz argued that the Pentagon is seeking to downgrade the status of U.S. troops at the wrong time: Currently, the prospect of political unrest and violence has grown because the lack of progress toward an agreement has angered ethnic Albanians while the prospect of limited statehood has angered Serbs.
For more information, check our earlier posts about this issue here and here. Many of the 400 Minnesota National Guard members who have been ordered to Kosovo live in MN-01, and the Defense Department's plan to change the mission's status has met with strong protests from the district's newspapers. Read the editorials in the Albert Lea Tribune, the Mankato Free Press, and the Owatonna People's Press,
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