Rep. Robin Browns’s recent letter touting the creation of a jobs task force and small business caucus that will somehow create jobs is laughable given how Rep. Brown voted last session. While all this sounds good, actions truly speak louder than words.

Of the 36 state representatives appointed to the jobs task force, 27 voted for job killing tax increases in the last legislative session. Only six legislators have experience creating jobs in the private sector. Nine others have current jobs in the private sector. Most (17) are full-time legislators with little or no income outside the state Legislature. The remaining four are teachers in public or nonprofit institutions.

A small business caucus sounds great but will this group actually vote for business and small business interests in Minnesota?

If you look at Rep. Brown’s voting record on issues from the 2007-2008 session from the National Federation of Independent Businesses that represent small business interests in Minnesota, Rep. Brown only has an 44 percent voting record.

If you look at the 2009 voting record on the issues scored by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Rep Brown scored 23.1 percent on issues of interest to businesses in Minnesota.

According to the Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation, if Minnesota were a country it would have the third-highest business taxes in the world. Most small business owners pay their taxes on the individual income tax. For joint filers making more than $250,000 and single filers making more than $141,000, a new 9 percent tax rate was proposed that would give Minnesota the third-highest individual income tax rate in the nation. Rep. Brown voted for this new fourth-tier income tax twice on HF2323 and HF885.

With just minutes before the midnight deadline on the last night of the session, the Democrats hurried another bill to increase taxes over a billion dollars a vote on HF2323 again with Rep. Brown again voting for passage.

The result is a jobs task force that is political cover and lip service for Democrats that voted for job-killing taxes last session. At a time when state leaders should be working to improve our business climate and should be relying on our dynamic businesses and talented workforce to create jobs, the task force is holding hearings on government-grown jobs, including a jumbo state bonding “stimulus” bill. So in the end we will get more of the same and expect different results? Rep. Brown just does not get it! Increasing taxes, government spending, and adding more mandates and regulations on businesses will create jobs — just not in Minnesota as jobs will relocate to where there is actually an incentive to create and grow jobs. Isn’t it about time to elect somebody willing to do more than tow the party line and only pay lip service to small businesses, farmers, families and taxpayers in Minnesota?

David Anderson

Lonsdale