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My Point of View by Aaron Farris

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This is the time of year we all sit down with family and friends and give thanks for everything that we have. This includes the privilege of living in the United States of America, the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Despite all the kindness going around this time of year, the holiday season is already being incredibly unkind to everyone’s bank accounts thanks to the inflation, supply and energy crises we’re facing as a nation due to the Democrats’ reckless spending of your money. Thankfully, we have a fighter in our Congressman, Jim Hagedorn, and know that he will always stand up for us in southern Minnesota.

This Thanksgiving, the price of a 16-pound turkey is up 18%, the price of a Costco pumpkin pie is up 17%, the price of a 3-pound bag of potatoes is up 13, and the price of a 2-pound bag of carrots is up 47%. I also hope you don’t plan on traveling this Thanksgiving because the average price of gas is a whopping 61% higher than it was in 2020. Last week, President Biden tweeted “America is on the move again,” which is ironic because we actually aren’t due to the astronomical price of gas. If we are, it’s in the wrong direction. This isn’t simple inflation; it’s a Thanksgiving tax imposed upon us by the Democrats’ insatiable appetite for spending our money.

Last week, Congressman Hagedorn did the right thing by voting against the “Build Back Better Act,” AKA the “Build Back Broke Act,” which would dictate your children’s education standards, provide amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants (incentivizing more illegal immigration when we just had the highest October border apprehensions in the 21st century), raise the cost of products made in the USA, impose a tax to heat your home, restructure the child tax credit into welfare without any work requirement, and double the size of the IRS.

But that’s not all, folks! Democrats claimed the “Build Back Broke Act” would cut the federal deficit by $112 billion over 10 years. But, after Speaker Pelosi failed to force a vote on the bill before the Congressional Budget Office could slap an official price tag on it, it was revealed that it in fact would add $367 billion to the deficit over 10 years. Democrats said the bill wouldn’t fuel continued inflation. Experts say it will. President Biden said the bill wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class. Read it, it does. Everything Democrats have said to try and sell people on this bill have been total and absolute lies. Thankfully, Congressman Hagedorn could see through these lies and didn’t vote to waste our taxpayer money by giving $2.5 billion to “tree equity” and $10 billion for an “environmental justice” slush fund (yeah, you can’t make this stuff up).

Included in this bill is $150 billion in housing grants that are available to felons convicted of domestic abuse, $25 million for President Biden to establish an “environmental justice initiative,” language increasing OSHA penalties by creating a fine of up to $700,000 per violation to enforce President Biden’s vaccine mandate and almost a billion dollars in increased funding to the Labor Department to increase enforcement of these mandates and the hefty penalties that come with these violations. As if everything else in your life isn’t expensive enough, they also thought it would be a good idea to throw in a natural gas tax that would eventually tax up to $1,500 per ton, which would cost the U.S. economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 American jobs.

Thankfully, we in Freeborn County have a Congressman with some common sense who knows this bill won’t help Minnesotans. The “Build Back Broke Act” will hurt an exponentially higher number of people than it will help.

This bill will go down in history as being a bigger disaster than Obamacare, the “Too Big to Fail” bailouts, and every “Home Alone” sequel after “Home Alone 2” combined. Unfortunately, this bill passed the House last week with only one Democratic Congressman voting for common sense and voting “no” on the bill. Thankfully (another thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving), this bill is sure to either fail outright or be drastically slimmed down once it reaches the Senate.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, including Congressman Hagedorn, who fights each and every day for us here in southern Minnesota. If Congressman Hagedorn wasn’t representing us in Congress, it would surely be a Democrat who would have voted for this monstrosity of a bill without thinking for a second how it would affect us. So, be thankful, and enjoy your Thanksgiving (and hopefully it’s a little cheaper to celebrate next year)!

Aaron Farris is the vice chairman of the Freeborn County Republican Party.