Watching the Minnesota state senate floor debate over the upper chamber's transportation funding bill--which would raise the gas tax while funding metro-area transit with an increased Twin Cities-region only sales-tax--Bluestem was struck by conflicting views of a transportation "war" offered by southwest metro suburban Republican Julianne Ortman (Chanhassen) and that of senate transportation committee chair, DFLer Scott Dibble (Minneapolis).
Both framed the bill in terms of war--but Ortman thought the attack was on the poorest of the poor (and everybody else), while Dibble defined the battle as one against potholes and for future prosperity which depends on well-maintained roads and bridges, along with reliable public transit.
At our request, The Uptake pulled video of both senators' remarks, going beyond our call to edit a Youtube of the moment. Here's that one video; first Ortman speaks, followed by Dibble:
Ortman says in part of a longer speech:
. . .Members, all of these taxes are regressive. What that means is they are imposed on the poorest of the poor and hit poor Minnesota families harder than anybody else because it's a much larger portion of their income and it's a much larger portion of the value of their vehicles.
Members, make no mistake. This is a tax on the poorest of poor Minnesotans. Members, this didn't just a transportation bill as I said it's not even needed this bill is a war, the declaration of war on drivers, on car owners, on commuters who might have to commute into Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
It's a war on businesses that have premises in the Twin Cities; it's gonna cost them a lot more to get their employees to work. It's a war on producers that have to pay for the costs of transportation. Those transportation costs get added into the price of goods, into the price if production, and the consumers then pay even more on top of the gas prices that they pay out of their pockets. . . .
After Senators Benson and Osmek speak, Dibble responds with his own battle cry:
I like to use the word war because this bill is a war. It's a war on the kinds of congestion that we're facing. It's war on our lack of investment that have occurred over 30 years despite the little bump that we got about seven years ago. It's a war on potholes and it's an effort to invest in shared prosperity across the state. I make no apologies for this bill.
We know from what I said earlier that business pays a huge premium. We either make some a rational investment up front or we pay later in lost opportunity. We pay in congestion. We pay in the inability to get to the things are important in our lives.. . .I don't aspire at all to what the house has put before us or the state of Minnesota, the people of Minnesota for transportation.
In order to do what they're doing, they're taking from General Fund resources that we would otherwise be using for our senior citizens and health care and education. They have over a billion dollars that they're cutting from the poorest and sickest Minnesotans in health care and Human Services, the youngest.
Want to talk about a war on poor people, and the most vulnerable, the most needy? That's a war on the most vulnerable and the most needy. And what are they doing? They're putting that in the transportation bill.
You know what? We've read this book before. This legislature has tried to put general fund dollars into transportation in the past and you know what's happened? The next year it's taken right out right out. Right out! so Senator Hann is incorrect when he says this is a sustainable plan that the house is putting before us. It is exactly the opposite.
What we do in transportation is we dedicate reliable, ongoing, sustainable resources so that we can plan for a long-term horizon, so that businesses and communities and people can invest in their lives and know that their ability to get to places and people getting to their jobs and their work sites.
And businesses can get goods and services to market and construction companies . . .can invest in mobilizing a workforce--and in the intensive capital investments they need to make to build those roads and bridges over the long haul. That's what sustained investment in transportation looks like and when we fail to do that we pay.
We pay because other states become more competitive--and they're making those investments. State after state, controlled by Republican governors and Republican legislature, are raising their gas taxes, are raising sales taxes in their metropolitan areas because they know that those are investments that have a return on the dollar.
And they know that they'll pay anyways in a loss of opportunity, in congestion, in lack of shared prosperity. That's the alternative. That's what the House puts before us.
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