Introducing Brian Grogan

Brian Grogan is the endorsed Republican candidate to challenge John Benson (DFL-Minnetonka) for the state House seat in District 43B. I have already documented on North Star Liberty what little I know about Brian: basically, he seems like he will make a great candidate. So I asked Brian to introduce his campaign positions, and here is what he wrote:

As the Republican endorsed candidate for House District 43B, I am excited to bring a new vision to address the challenges that Minnesota faces. We need to bring change to how we address job growth and our economy, raising health care cost, inadequate funding levels for our schools and being good stewards of our environment.

Most importantly, it is my firm belief that these challenges can be achieved without raising corporate or personal income taxes. We are, after all, already the 12th highest taxed state in the nation. In addition, we are rank 49th in the nation for our state’s business tax policy. Our citizens are taxed enough as a state. The key to solving our budget challenges is not more taxes but a better prioritization of what we need to do as a government for our citizens.

My priorities will be to create jobs by developing tax neutral policy incentives for business investment in infrastructure and equipment. Secondly, I want to create jobs by proposing legislation that reduces regulations and offers tax incentives which induce businesses to locate to Minnesota.

The leadership response in St. Paul for meeting our state’s challenges is, too often, to increase taxes and regulation in order to force compliance and support supervision. We can do better than this. The belief that higher taxes, more regulation and bigger government are better approaches to addressing the challenges within our society is misguided. I believe a Tibetan Monk said it quite well when he commented that "the only way to implement our vision for society is to bring it down to the situation of a single household" or as I would add, single neighborhood or single business. Our citizens and small businesses know what they need and what they need is a responsive government not a big brother.

Watch this blog for more from Brian during the campaign. Next we'll hear what he has to say on health care, education funding, and the environment.