- Downey’s Nov. 10 op-ed op-ed
- Charlie Quimby’s response, senior fellow, Growth & Justice, Nov. 13, 2009 (scroll to “spending restrictions”)
Kevin’s response:
We need a more moderate voice
Many of you may have been wondering what kind of legislator Keith Downey will be. In an op-ed article criticizing the House Jobs Task Force in last week’s Star Tribune he demonstrated that his work will be guided by ideological inflexibility and an inability to work with others. This should be alarming to people in our community who want a moderate representative who can work with people across the political spectrum to craft practical solutions to the serious problems facing our state.
Representative Downey’s ideological obsession with “government interference” limits the options available for finding long-term solutions. While he correctly recognizes a talented workforce, educational excellence, and quality of life fuel our prosperity and are key elements of our long-term success, he has no prescription for preserving these key elements. Instead of doing the “hard work” of prioritizing, he clings to the ideological belief that maintaining our vitality in the long-term requires no more than tax “reform” and reduced government interference.
This one-size-fits-all thinking also inhibits creative thinking in the short term. Despite record unemployment in our state, Representative Downey advocates we do nothing to address the real pain being experienced by thousands of unemployed Minnesotans today. The very stimulus bonding idea he rejects, for instance, could create jobs in a construction industry hit hard by the recession. Bonding for such work allows us to create those jobs now by taking advantage of historically-low interest rates to pay for renewing infrastructure so critical to our future.
I am perhaps most disappointed at Representative Downey’s inability to work with others to find solutions to the problems we face. Just two meetings into his service on the Jobs Task Force, he abandoned efforts to work from the inside, choosing instead to preserve his ideological purity by criticizing from the outside. I understand he may have very real disagreements with other members of the Task Force; such disagreements are an expected and vital part of the democratic process. But that process is only successful when people who disagree with each other work together to find solutions to benefit all of us.
We need a moderate legislator who can work with people from across the political spectrum to find practical solutions to the challenges we face. I hope you’ll help me become that legislator as we work to keep Edina and Minnesota great today and in the future.
