Small business owners in Borderland, like others across the 8th District, are frustrated by over regulation and a complicated tax system, according to U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack.
Cravaack met late Tuesday with about 40 people in Borderland during a visit that included a stop at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection port in International Falls. Cravaack is a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, which oversees CBP operations.
Cravaack discussed the Borderland stop as he traveled Wednesday morning to a round table of small business owners in Hibbing.
Cravaack said he met with CBP Port Director Kris Lessard to “see how they’re doing and what kind of input I can give to them to better help them do their job.”
Lessard briefed Cravaack on a proposal to site a new CBP port facility, he said, but Cravaack said federal budget issues will make constructing the facility challenging.
“It’s going to be up to Customs where to put the new facilities and where to spend their money,” he said. “They’re doing a fantastic job up there with the small space they’re in. I am happy they are able to fulfill their mission.
A meeting later in the evening included discussions on local issues, including finding federal money to help support a rehabilitation of the local wastewater treatment facility in the Falls.
“Information was given to them about public-private partnerships and the best way to try to find the right money for the right projects,” he said.
“International Falls is very important to me,” he said. “I need to make sure I get up there and listen to the concerns of the people.”
Meanwhile, much of the Tuesday evening discussion surrounded challenges faced by small business owners, he said.
Cravaack pointed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and what many see as that agency’s over regulation of small businesses. “I wish I had a quarter every time I heard ‘EPA’,” he said.
“Small businesses need a breath,” he said. “That’s what we’re all about — trying to ensure small businesses start moving forward and have the confidence to reinvest in their business. When businesses see the massive increase in debt, they see increased taxes.”
And, Cravaack said, consumers ultimately pay the tax increases passed on by small business owners, who try to realize a profit to pay staff and maintain operations. Businesses may also choose to streamline, which means people are laid off, he said.
“Those taxes that get passed on to those businesses cannot be absorbed,” Cravaack said. “They’re already on a razor edge.”
Recovery of the economy will start with small business owners when they start reinvesting and hiring people, he said. At the Wednesday Hibbing round table, Cravaack said he would ask “what can I do to get you to have that confidence once again to start reinvesting in your companies?”
Small businesses won’t reinvest in themselves until “they have the confidence in the administration that there are no new taxes lingering, that there is no new health plan” that will add to their costs, said Cravaack.
Cravaack said government seems to be getting in the way of that confidence.
“The great unknown factor is that government is not helping, but hurting them,” he said. “(Businesses) want to control the pain.”
Cravaack said he’s held 29 town hall meetings in the district and is hearing similar concerns.
And while he calls traveling between the 8th District and Washington, D.C. “a crazy life,” he says his work as an airline pilot at the same time as serving as an active member of the Navy Reserve trained him for it.
He said he flies back to Washington in time to vote on bills Monday. He sleeps on an air mattress in his office to ease time constraints. “My air mattress is not too comfortable, not very cozy, but if I can survive the Navy rack (beds) I can survive the air mattress,” he said.
He said he makes the most of his time traveling in the state to catch up on reading and return emails and phone calls.
Meanwhile, Cravaack said a bill expected to be considered in two weeks in the House deals with land swaps between the state and federal government involving school trust lands.
He said the federal school trust plan can work hand in hand with a state plan to increase the money gained by activities on the school trust lands, of which 855,000 acres are in Koochiching County.
“We will do a value for value land swap,” he said. “If we do acreage for acreage and end up with swamp, it won’t help the schools.”
The lands the federal government will swap for state land in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness will involve about 30,000 acres of timberland north of Virginia and other lands that will be designated school trust lands in mineral areas.
“The taxes associated with mining and timber interest will be directly benefiting schools,” he said.
He pointed at the school trust land swap as an example of what he has learned while on the road meeting with constituents. He also noted that as a result of a mayors round table, language requiring additional and costly reflectivity in road signs was eliminated from a bill.
Cravaack said he’s been discussing the federal transportation bill with Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Tom Sorel as it relates to the needs of Minnesota’s highways. Cravaack serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, of which he is vice chair of the Aviation Subcommittee.
“The idea that we have in the House Transportation Committee is who knows better the needs of Minnesota than Minnesota itself,” he said. “We want to give the money to the DOT and allow them to make the decision instead of a congressman coming in and wanting to have a road paved again for the third time in six years.
“For years, it’s been the wrong money going to the wrong projects for the wrong reasons instead of the right money going to the right projects for the right reasons.”
Cravaack also discussed with The Journal the federal deficit. He said unless changes are made now, the nation will be forced to experience the austerity measures Greece is now facing.
He said he believes strongly that making changes now to the Medicare and Social Security programs will help avoid serious shortfalls in the future.
And, he said, the House’s budget bill, known as the “Path to Prosperity” would also assist in decreasing the federal deficit. He said the U.S. Senate has not approved a budget bill since 2009. A commanding officer in the U.S. Navy who didn’t have a budget would be relieved of duty, he said.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “politics gets in the way of common sense business.”
He later added, “If the Senate punts on this, they do not want Americans to know how they are spending their money.”
Twenty-eight bills pending in the Senate have not been allowed to be debated, according to Cravaack. One of those bills includes the EPA’s Boiler MACT emissions standards which directly affects the Boise Inc. International Falls paper mill, he noted.
Cravaack said if House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi offered a better plan, he’d vote for it.
“We can’t keep spending money we don’t have and severely indebting our children to future generations of massive debt,” he said.
Massive debt will require massive taxes, he said.
He pointed to the lifestyle of Europeans, who, because of high energy costs, consider microwaves, air conditioners and clothes dryers great luxuries that the majority do not have. Efforts that could lead the U.S. toward those standards “are just un-American,” he said.
“I am the grandson of immigrants who came from Europe because of opportunities in the United States,” he said. “Why would we want to limit those opportunities?”
