by Jim Hagedorn
Feb. 13 – March 6, 2010
Hi and thank you for being here and fighting for our great Party, State and Nation!
I am Jim Hagedorn of Blue Earth – the fresh face with the familiar last name, who has that right mix of farm raised Minnesota values, Ronald Reagan conservatism, and Capitol Hill experience to defeat Tim Walz and be an effective conservative leader in the Congress.
We handed out a campaign card that touches upon my lifetime of conservatism and highlights my strong conservative economic, defense and social values views. The picture on back was taken at the Kato Ballroom in 1979 – and perhaps many of you were at that great event when Governor and Mrs. Reagan visited Mankato.
A fundamental difference between my Republican competitors and me is that they make promises and TALK about how they will remain good Republicans and change Washington, D.C. – meanwhile, I display my RECORD of legislative achievement and government reform on the national stage, and my lifetime of effectively fighting for our conservative cause.
Without holding elective office, I have accomplished infinitely more, legislatively, than Congressman Tim Walz, State Representative Randy Demmer, and former State Representative Allen Quist, who, combined, have held elective office for more than 16 years.
You might wonder how someone who lacked a Congressman’s law-making power could successfully move serious legislation through the Congress to cut spending, eliminate bureaucrat jobs, and improve government service.
Well, as the Congressional Affairs Officer for two important Department of the Treasury agencies (the Financial Management Service and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing) I did just that. It was my job to interact with the Congress and manage a portfolio of legislative proposals, and during my career I moved 7 government reform bills through the Congress, two of which were my own invention.
A legislative achievement of which I was particularly proud was enactment of a landmark electronic funds transfer bill to require federal agencies to issue payments by Direct Deposit, instead of paper check. I made the effort to champion this initiative upon learning that my agency issued over 900 million payments each year, and that half were by paper check, and that check payments were 22 times more expensive than those issued electronically, 44 cents versus 2 cents, respectively.
I first persuaded the Treasury Department and President Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget to let me transmit the bill to the Congress, and then convinced Republican Congressmen Jim Ross Lightfoot of Iowa and Stephen Horn of California to introduce the measure. As a team, Representatives Lightfoot and Horn, their key staff members, and I pushed H.R. 1698, the “Mandatory Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1995,” through the House and Senate. The bill was formally enacted into law as part of Public Law 104-134, the “Omnibus Recessions and Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1996,” and is commonly referred to as EFT ’99, because the law’s provisions became effective January 1, 1999.
This simple, commonsense change led to the closure of two federal check processing centers, saved taxpayers more than $1 billion, eliminated check theft and other financial crimes, and improved service to recipients of federal funds, including Social Security and VA beneficiaries.
My legislative accomplishments demonstrate that while working on Capitol Hill and “behind enemy lines” in the bureaucracy I stayed true to my conservative beliefs and used my expertise and federal positions to persuade decision-makers to reform government and cut spending. I am probably one of the very few ever to run for Congress who has personally reduced the size of his own federal agency.
You can trust me to go to Washington and work successfully to cut spending, eliminate government and remain true to our conservative convictions, because that is my record.
Now the task at hand – defeating liberal Tim Walz. The national liberals are all but carpet bombing the greatness of America – taking dead aim on the United States Constitution, our dynamic Free Enterprise system, and the enduring concepts of personal responsibility, individual opportunity, personal freedom, and traditional cultural values.
I changed my life to run for Congress because I was fed up with the liberalism that Republicans and Democrats were inflicting upon our nation. I was disillusioned and spoke out against the go-along-get-along mentality of the professional Republican politicians, who, in my opinion, squandered a golden opportunity to roll back liberalism when we controlled the House, the Senate and the White House for the first 6 years of the Bush administration.
And, I remain appalled by the left-wing arrogance of the Obama administration and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and am outraged that my home area Congressman is so misrepresenting southern Minnesota, sponsoring fringe left bills and casting vote after vote to send our nation into socialism.
Unlike my Republican opponents, I made the decision to enter this race last August, when no other Republican was working the district, President Obama’s popularity ratings were still hovering around 60%, and the concept of defeating Tim Walz was considered a long shot.
But after conferring with scores of party leaders, I made the commitment to run because I truly believe that if we do not defeat Tim Walz and restore conservative leadership in Washington, D.C. this November, we stand to forever lose a great share of the brilliance our Forefathers fought and died to create. The way I look at it, the Forefathers and all who have served in the military are the real risk takers, so giving up an excellent, safe job was not much of a sacrifice.
Tim Walz’s extreme liberalism represents a plague to our American way of life. Instead of listening to you – the moderate-to-conservative voters of southern Minnesota – Tim Walz follows the commands of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the fringe left.
Tim Walz is the most liberal Congressman in the history of southern Minnesota, and to reclaim America we must defeat Tim Walz and those like him!
My message to the electorate in this campaign is quite simple: The most important vote a Member of Congress casts is the first of each Congress to organize the House and select the Speaker.
A vote for Tim Walz is a vote for Nancy Pelosi, and continuation of the Obama administration’s left-wing agenda. So if southern Minnesotans want to reverse course in Washington, D.C., then they must vote to defeat liberal Tim Walz.
One of the key issues in this campaign is jobs and the economy. Until the economy begins to regain its form, revenues will remain low, the deficit will rapidly grow and Americans will continue to suffer. In fact, almost all of our long-term deficit/national debt reduction efforts hinge upon the resurgence of strong, stable economic growth.
Instead of seeking private sector answers to our economic dilemma, Tim Walz embraces the Obama-Pelosi agenda of more deficit spending, bigger government and suffocating federal regulation.
Tim Walz is a big spender who voted for President Obama’s stimulus program, which is nothing but a trillion dollar make-work jobs program that wastes money we don’t have on projects we don’t need or cannot afford, and for no discernable economic purpose. Walz also voted for the FY 2009 Omnibus spending bill, the largest in our nation’s history, as well as every major spending program considered since President Obama’s inauguration. Tim Walz’s fingerprints are all over the increase of the national debt and our dangerous leap towards insolvency, and I will make sure the voters hold him accountable this November.
By contrast, my economic plan is simple and time-tested: FREE ENTERPRISE CAPITALISM. As your Congressman, I will work with like-minded Members of Congress to support policies to return to the old Regan-JFK playbook – to cut individual and business taxes across-the-board, cut the capital gains tax, provide meaningful investment tax credits for business, slash intrusive federal regulations, and harshly restrain federal spending.
Establishing a sound business climate will foster private sector innovation and risk-taking and unleash the magic of our dynamic free enterprise system, something that will especially help small business, the job-creating engine of our economy.
Now, if there is a big-spending, big-government, high-tax idea to kill jobs or undermine economic recovery, President Obama-Speaker Pelosi and devoted liberal worshiper Tim Walz will sniff it out.
One of the most economically discouraging initiatives on the legislative burner is the Obamacare, government takeover of health care. This bill not only places the highest quality medical system in the world at risk, but will transfer a trillion plus dollars from the private sector to federal bureaucrats. The bill will crush small business, harm the economy and kill jobs.
We need look no further than the Mayo Clinic to realize that the United States is the preeminent leader in medical care and innovation. Everyone from kings and queens, dictators and presidents travel from around the globe to visit southern Minnesota for medical treatment. The national health care bill voted for by Tim Walz is a monstrosity that insults the people of southern Minnesota and represents a dagger pointed at the heart of the Mayo Clinic and will undercut all private medical facilities and those who depend upon them.
As is the case every time is it implemented, national health care will be enormously inefficient and force rationing. I like to say that socialized medicine creates two kinds of waiting lists: You, the patient, wait for care; and the government waits for you to deteriorate or die so it doesn’t have to pay the bill.
The liberal Democrat health care scheme will recklessly tax America’s producers and will lead to higher costs for patients, doctors and hospitals, and less wealth for the American people. Additionally, the bill penalizes innovative companies, such as the medical device manufacturers responsible for creating high-tech devices that prolong and/or improve the quality of life.
Tim Walz claims that his national health care bill will improve service and cut costs. But the liberal Democrat bill creates over 100 new bureaucracies and offices. When was the last time we expanded government and cut costs and improved service? It doesn’t happen! Another phony reason Walz peddles to defend his liberal position is that many foreign countries deliver health care better than the United States. From which of those countries would Tim Walz agree to receive major medical care, rather than the United States?
Another emerging job killer on the horizon is card check. Tim Walz is a teacher’s union teacher, who, frankly, needs to be sent back to high school! Walz is so big-labor that he’s anti-business, anti-employee, anti-economic growth.
Card check will stymie economic activity and business expansion and reward, not the rank-and-file worker, but the big union bosses. Card check, like Tim Walz, must be defeated, or our economy will suffer.
But no draconian legislation stands as a bigger drain on the economy than the Cap and Trade/global warming bill Tim Walz voted for at Nancy Pelosi’s insistence.
Cap and Trade restricts the use of fossil fuels, places arbitrary limits on carbon emissions, and imposes a European socialist scheme to raise taxes and drive up energy costs. I’m all for alternative energy, but turning over our economy and way of life to unproven, unreliable and overly expensive energy sources is short-sighted and irresponsible. Instead of limiting our energy options, we need to explore and develop all sources at our disposal, including our vast oil, gas, coal, oil shale, nuclear, alternative energy and emerging high-technology solutions.
Walz’s Cap and Trade bill will increase the cost of fuel, fertilizer and electricity for our farmers; undermine our manufacturers; harm health care providers and small business; and senselessly extract money out of the pockets of everyone who drives a car and turns on a light switch.
Walz’s bill will also harm exports – especially the agricultural exports that create wealth and jobs for southern Minnesotans. Why? Because Cap and Trade is Unilateral Energy Disarmament, a phrase I coined to explain that the liberal Democrat bill only applies to the United States, not high-growth competitors like China, Brazil or India.
Tim Walz is such a left-winger that he believes we must limit carbon emissions to save the earth from global warming. But the only climate Walz’s Cap and Trade scheme is going to cool is the business climate of the United States!
I am equally concerned that Minnesota’s Next Generation Energy Act – passed in 2007 with the help of my Republican competitor, State Representative Randy Demmer – will also harm Minnesota’s economy and needlessly drive up energy costs. For all intents and purposes, the new Minnesota law is a micro-version of the national Cap and Trade legislation.
The new Minnesota law makes it all but impossible to build new coal-fired power plants, thus forcing our power companies to generate electricity from more expensive sources. Given that upwards of 90% of southern Minnesota’s electricity is delivered via coal-fired plants, the Minnesota Cap and Trade bill will undoubtedly lead to higher costs and less productivity.
I believe that State Representative Demmer needs to explain how his Minnesota Cap and Trade vote will not undercut our efforts to exploit Tim Walz’s own liberal Cap and Trade betrayal of the priorities and interests of southern Minnesotans.
Let’s be honest, we are not going to restore conservative leadership in Washington, D.C. by sending ambitious go-along-get-along politicians to the U.S. House of Representatives. Defeating an incumbent Congressman is never easy, even in the most advantageous of election cycles. To defeat Tim Walz we must endorse a conservative who has the spine to take strong conservative positions, the political skills to defend conservatism and effectively contrast it with Walz’s liberalism, and then have the courage and tenacity to go toe-to-toe and attack Walz’s issue-positions relentlessly.
I am the authentic conservative who will stand up for principle and fight Democrats and Republicans who block the commonsense solutions needed to restore America’s greatness.
I’ve been blessed to see the Congress from many angles. I’ve lived with a Congressman, worked for a Congressman, and worked with Members of Congress to reform government and fight the bureaucracy.
The job of a Congressman is neat, but the title and glamour and so forth do not impress me. My dad was a grain and livestock farmer, and I view Members of Congress as regular folks who should go to Washington to do good things for the people.
But what does impress me about being your Congressman is the opportunity to take that congressional voting card and go down on the House floor and cast the votes to change the direction of this country, to defend the principles and people who make this country great.
With your support, I’ll get there. And when I do, I will humbly serve you and remain true to our conservative beliefs.
Thank you.
Jim Hagedorn