When will it be time to invest?

Last week, two different announcements were made about taxes. First, the House and Senate in Washington were debating whether to permanently eliminate the estate tax at a cost of billions of dollars per year to our country's future. Second, a group of affluent Minnesotans, in conjunction with Growth and Justice, ran a full page ad calling on the state to raise taxes, with the largest increase for those with the most resources, in order to invest in the future of our state for education, health care, child care and transportation.

With a national debt of $8 trillion and annual deficits in the hundreds of billions, it is hard to understand the call for eliminating more taxes. Of course, if your goal is to invest in the future of the richest families in the country, at the expense of all Americans, than eliminating the estate tax makes sense. It is important to recognize that many very wealthy Americans have said they don't want this tax eliminated and believe it is harmful to our future.

The full page ad was meant with sarcasm and derision by Governor Pawlenty. Apparently his only interest is to keep taxes down, despite the repeated reports of the growing number of uninsured in Minnesota and the huge disparities in education between white students and students of color. It is time for Minnesotans to seriously debate tax policy and make sure it is one of the key issues in the coming elections, both for Governor and Congress. We need to ask what kind of future we are building for our children when we are not prepared to invest in them with higher taxes. Yes, we should demand accountability from lawmakers and make sure they are investing well, but if we don't give them more resources through higher taxes, than they cannot invest in the future of our children.