I make no pretense of hiding my admiration for Bill Clinton (D) or Arne Carlson (R). Both men were great leaders. Clinton avoided foreign excursions and was a fiscal hawk. Carlson inherited a financial mess and turned the state around, leaving us with a strong educational system. Both men took some heat from their respective parties when they went in the face of party leadership to either reform welfare or raise some much needed revenue. For this, they have earned my respect.

Just yesterday, another politician made a gigantic move. State of Minnesota Senator David Tomassoni (D), not normally known as pro-business, proposed a bill in the Minnesota legislature that would that would let most businesses, especially light manufactures, to be exempt from sales tax on capital improvements and repairs (as reported in the Duluth News Tribune, March 30, 2005). This flies in the face of the leadership in St. Paul. Let me be the first to congratulate the Senator on such a bold move. You have earned my respect.

What is ironic about Tomassoni’s proposal is that those who think rather concretely often purport that democrats are not pro-business. The Senator’s proposal is most likely one of the most pro-business bills that may come out of the legislature this year – all this from the “anti-business” party. We can shift costs, cut programs, and limit funding to education while crying out that we have not raised taxes; but until we propose bills as Senator Tomassoni just did, we cannot take credit for solving anything.

Tomassoni’s bill may be the tourniquet for small manufactures in our state. It is no secret that overseas manufactures are killing the manufacturing sector in our country. We often hear a collective outcry to levy a tariff or somehow bar imports. These measures may sound reasonable. However, they would create more problems than they solve. Tomassoni’s bill, on the other hand, will go a long way to provide relief for manufactures and the jobs they provide.