PAULSEN VOTED AGAINST US ON THE TAX BILL

There have been numerous demonstrations calling for Rep. Erik Paulsen to hold town hall meetings but he’s refused.  We recently found a video recording of a town hall meeting Paulsen held on August 2, 2010 courtesy of Michael McIntee. After watching that, it’s easy to understand why Paulsen doesn’t hold town halls; he’s awful.  It almost makes you feel sorry for him, until you realize that what makes his performance so abhorrent is his blind adherence to conservative memes that primarily benefit businesses and the donor class but penalize the middle and lower classes and increase economic inequality.

In light of the recent vote on the $1.5 trillion Republican tax plan that will increase the national debt in order to give tax breaks to large corporations and the donor class, his 2010 town hall meeting was almost laughably ironic. He claimed then that the most difficult problem facing the country was the projected increase in the national debt. One constituent astutely pointed out that we need taxes to pay for our schools, roads and so much else that contributes to our quality of life and noted that if Congress let the Bush tax cuts expire and returned to the higher level of taxes that existed during the Reagan administration, the national debt problem would be less. Paulsen responded that he didn’t want to terminate the Bush tax cuts because that would “punish” businesses and ruin economic growth. In fact, the evidence shows that to be false.  As noted in an earlier blog, in 2012, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service published a report that flatly contradicted the conservative ideology that lowering tax rates boosts economic growth.

At the 2010 town hall, Paulsen was also confronted by a constituent who said that people voted for him because they thought he was a moderate but that after being elected, he has acted as a conservative ideologue. See the video at 38 minutes, 52 seconds.  Paulsen denied the claim, saying “I vote what’s right for the district . . . based on constituent feedback”.  That is also demonstrably false.

As noted in our last blog, the day before Paulsen voted to repeal and replace Obamacare on May 4, 2017, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published a poll showing that residents of Hennepin County, Paulsen’s constituents, overwhelmingly supported Obamacare and opposed repeal and replacement of the law. Paulsen knew or should have known of those poll numbers and he’d previously gotten an earful of “constituent feedback” from the protests against repeal and replacement right outside his office window.

Paulsen’s vote for the House Republican tax plan was clearly not what’s right for the district. Lori Sturdevant pointed out in a recent Star Tribune Op-Ed that the House bill’s elimination of the long-standing deduction for state and local taxes is a particular blow for all Minnesotans and especially to Paulsen’s constituents in the Third Congressional District because half of us claimed that deduction in 2016. According to an article by the Hennepin and Ramsey County Commissioners, the loss of that deduction puts pressure on state and local governments to spend less on education for our children and grandchildren, on infrastructure which all of us use, and the social safety net for those who cannot help themselves. Those public resources, paid by taxes, of value to us all, are what make our communities thrive. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said ”Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.”  Eleven Republican Congressmen from other high tax/high services states refused to vote in favor of the House bill when they saw how it would adversely affect their constituents.  But Paulsen voted against the clear interests of his constituents to support a conservative ideology that has never worked to the greater good of us all.


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