Let me tell you about the family farm where I grew up. Askeaton is a little crossroads community about twenty miles south of Green Bay. It's where I learned three core values: work hard, believe in God, and root for the Packers.
Farming is hard work, and it took the whole family to get all the work done, especially in the summer growing season. Our farm was pretty typical - we milked about 45 cows, and my dad worked off the farm as a prison guard for extra income and for health insurance.
There are a lot of families just like mine here in Northeast Wisconsin, working hard on the farm, struggling to get by - only to see the Bush Administration sock it to them at every turn.
The President's latest budget is an affront to the values I learned growing up on the farm - hard work, personal responsibility, providing opportunity for everyone, and respecting the needs of working families.
There's been a lot of talk about the recent cuts to student loans and health care, and for good reason. I was lucky enough to be able to pay my way through the University of Wisconsin with scholarships and what I earned during the summers. But good friends of mine in high school wouldn't have been able to go to college or tech school without help from student loans. The Medicare cuts obviously affect senior citizens most directly, but, thanks to our messed-up health care system, a lot of these cuts will be passed along to all of us in the form of higher insurance premiums. Family farmers are small businesspeople, and they struggle a lot to find affordable health insurance for themselves and their families given their relatively hazardous profession and a risk pool of only a few people.
To add insult to injury, this budget hits family dairy farmers with a one-two punch - it would raise their taxes AND cut the supports that help small farmers keep their heads above water.
Bush's budget would make life harder for family farmers across Wisconsin and the greater Midwest. The average Wisconsin dairy farm would pay $720 more per year in federal taxes, and the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives estimates that the total hit to Wisconsin farmers alone for FY2007 would be about $6.9 million. The cuts affect the MILC program, which disproportionately helps small dairy farmers.
I believe these budget priorities are just wrong.
We don't have to let the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress get away with this kind of stuff anymore. The days of Republicans handing out favor after favor to their lobbyist friends while sticking it to the rest of us must end this November. I'm going to win in Wisconsin's 8th District, and I'm going to join a great crop of Democratic newcomers committed to changing the way things are done in Washington.
When I get to Congress, I'll fight tooth and nail to make our budgets moral again, to put hard-working middle class families and small farmers first instead of wealthy and powerful special interests.
I'd appreciate it if you took a moment to share your thoughts on how we can fight back against this immoral budget proposal.