In times of crisis, Minnesotans come together. We do our part and pitch in to help our neighbors. Right now, doctors and nurses are working tirelessly around the clock, often without the equipment they need to save lives. Grocery workers and small businesses are keeping the lights on to provide essential goods and services to our families. Truckers and farmers are making sure there is food to sustain us. Teachers and professors are innovating to keep our education system going. My own son is working in a factory manufacturing the parts for ventilators.
So, it was with profound sadness that I watched the demonstrators in front of the governor’s residence on April 17. While most Americans support social distancing measures, this small minority is putting lives at risk. Pettiness is playing out before our eyes in the middle of a pandemic. We are better than this.
I love representing Minnesota, even while I deplore the partisan politics of Washington. I have supported the Trump administration when I believe it has the right policies — like investing in infrastructure — and speak out forcefully when it does not. I have taken the same attitude toward unsound policy introduced by Washington Democrats, and at times felt the ire that comes with standing up to your own party, including my opposition to a pay raise for members of Congress.
We can be better than the bitter tone of our current politics. I see it every day as I watch neighbors celebrate and support our front-line health care workers and stay home, engaging in self-sacrifice to keep everyone safer. I see it each time I hold a town hall and the respectful way most folks who may not agree with me engage.
[image_caption]Rep. Angie Craig[/image_caption]
To open our economy responsibly we need every resource the federal government has at its disposal, such as the Defense Production Act, to manufacture the personal protective equipment needed for our first responders to take care of sick patients. We need a supply chain czar to ensure that medical supplies get to where they are needed most. We must ensure that bad actors are not price-gouging essential products and that Washington politicians are not using insider information to profit from this crisis.
Over the past few weeks, I have worked to ensure that small businesses have access to loans to survive. I continue to push for aid to our counties, cities and towns and for help for our local hospitals given the enormous pressures the pandemic has wrought.
I do not know how our politics got this broken, but I refuse to believe that it has to be this way. And I will not stop trying until, together, we change it.
Angie Craig represents Minnesota’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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Goodness, as a live long conservative I have found it difficult to have any recent support for a Democrat, but she certainly hit the mark with this more than logical letter.
Thank you, Congresswoman Craig, for holding firm to Minnesota values. Thank you for seeking solutions that are good for all. Thank you for forcefully rejecting special interests and greed. The partisan divide at all levels, not to mention our current administration, especially President Trump, have lowered the bar for clear thinking and civility in our country. It is breaking us. Minnesota is leading the way through this complex mess. We are fortunate to have you in D.C. Stay with it. Good will prevail.
How did we get to this place? Let’s start with the Obama years when he took over the Great Recession left behind by bush and repubs…who absolutely refused to help clean up their mess they left behind with the idea that if our economy continued to struggle…Obama would be a one term president.
That is today’s version of repubs…no concern for the economy or the people…just in power and control with little desire for truthfulness which is apparent with this repub president who is closing in on 20,000 recorded lies and Mitch McConnell who has honestly referred to himself as the Grim Reaper.
For repubs today, it’s only about winning…power and control…not the economy…not the people…not the country.
Yes how did the system get so broken and our values so twisted. The COVID-19 virus is a true and real threat to our general well-being and it is disappointing to see selfishness and narrow mindedness often prevail, especially in our legislators. However there is another very real threat to our well-being and health and that is the growing threat to our fresh water. So how is it that our Minnesota legislature is supporting the most toxic industry
in the world , copper nickel sulfide mining in our pristine waters of northern Minnesota, even despite the flawed permit process and environmental disasters associated with these ecological nemesis’s known throughout the world.
The conservative movement is now undertaking to politicize the pandemic, because they think this will reap some sort of political gain for them. Their rightwing Noise Machine (Fox News, hate radio and their crackpot internet network) is working to convince Trump supporters that Covid-19 is not “really” an emergency, that it is no more dangerous than the flu, and that the shutdowns are wholly unnecessary, being done gratuitously by Dem governors, solely to display the power of “Big Gub’mint to Destroy Our Freedoms!”
So while many Minnesotans and Americans are “pulling together”, a large number are not, since they are being led to (irrational) societal division by their leaders–starting with Trump. In 2020, it is a piety to imagine that there is any national problem which will not be used by the conservative movement as a vehicle by which to enlarge their power. Party over Country.
“I do not know how our politics got this broken….”
Representative Craig, it’s not hard to understand how our politics got this broken, and so I’m thinking you probably do know. And while avoiding assigning responsibility, as you are so careful to do, didn’t break our civic life, it assuredly keeps us from repairing it.