Position Information

Throughout my life and my career, many events and conversations have shaped my thoughts and ideas. I want to take this time to talk about three issues; education, health care, and transportation. By bringing these difficult issues forward and taking them on, I believe that we can move our state forward and help make Minnesota even stronger. If you have any questions about what you see here, please feel free to contact me at clint@clintfaust.com

EDUCATION

“Our children face an uncertain and challenging future. Here are some ideas to make sure our children can compete in a global economy.”

• We must simplify the basic education funding formula and make sure that districts are getting adequate funds for a solid baseline education.
• We must empower teachers and administrators to enforce strong discipline standards in our schools.
• I support a location equity index component for the funding formula that would help school districts in Plymouth.
• The Federal government needs to live up to its commitment for special education funding, and we need to review our interpretation of the state and federal mandates in special education to confirm their effectiveness.
• We must rely less on property taxes to fund education.
• We must review where every dime is going in education.
• We should be giving tuition breaks to students majoring in hard sciences and encouraging partnering between the University of Minnesota and research-driven businesses and technology industries.
• We should expand Early Childhood and Parent Education, both of which are proven to have a high return on investment.
• We must eliminate red tape and unfunded mandates from the state and federal levels.

"HEALTH CARE

“We have great health care, but the costs are skyrocketing.”

Spiraling health care costs have brought us to a point that we as Americans never imagined ourselves to be. 

Of the 300 million Americans, nearly 50 million are uninsured, another 25 million are underinsured¹ and millions more live in fear that their claims will be denied by the health care bureaucracy.

Health care costs are consuming more and more of the family budget.

How high do our health care costs have to get and how many people have to be bankrupted before we really tackle the problems of a broken system? What can we do to reduce costs to make businesses more competitive in the global economy?

• We need to promote a competition of ideas for health care reform.
• Small businesses must be allowed to form insurance pools.
• We must ensure that everyone has access to affordable health care.

There are no easy answers—but we can come together as a community to start the conversation going on how to achieve that most basic of rights—the right to be healthy.

My opponent voted six times against health care reform.²

1http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june08/underinsured_06-10.html
2House journal pages, 4315, 6112, 7565, 10072, 12064, 12065.

"TRANSPORTATION

“We need a comprehensive plan that creates more transportation choices.”

I look at fixing our transportation system as an investment in our future. Our grandparents’ generation had the foresight and will to build our great interstate highway system of roads and bridges. We need to continue the tradition by making sure these roads and bridges are properly maintained and safe.

The day-to-day problems we are seeing are caused by neglected infrastructure. We know that short-term solutions haven’t worked and with a million people projected to move to the Twin Cities in the coming 22 years, we shouldn’t be given a false choice between roads and mass transit.

Investing in a comprehensive transportation plan will:

• Provide a safer, faster commute
• Provide jobs to build and maintain roads and transit alternatives
• Provide less congested roads
• Decrease our dependence on foreign oil

To move us forward let’s

• Properly maintain roads and bridges
• Widen I-494 in Plymouth and reduce congestion on Highway 169
• Widen the I-494 bridge over Schmidt Lake Road.
• Deliver comprehensive mass transit within 10 years

I view our current and future public transportation infrastructure as a community asset, and I will bring fiscally responsible transportation planning to the State Capitol.