HURON – Republicans passed a tax bill just before Christmas that was everything the 1986 tax overhaul – the last time for such legislation – was not, Tim Bjorkman, seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House, said Thursday.
“That was a year and a half in the making and had broad bipartisan support,” the retired circuit court judge from Canistota said of the Reagan-era tax reform effort.
Instead of a revenue-neutral bill, this time around the $1.5 trillion tax package will add billions of dollars to the mounting debt.
“We haven’t begun to assess the cost of the damage done,” Bjorkman said at the District 22 Democratic Forum. “This is an unprecedented raid on the United States Treasury for the benefit of the wealthy donor class people.”
He said he believes in repealing the new law and replacing it with responsible tax legislation that takes a more bipartisan approach.
“There have to be adults in the room when you negotiate that bill,” Bjorkman said.
As a member of Congress, he would work to cut corporate welfare to help balance the budget, and close the loopholes that enable the wealthiest 1 percent to pay less in taxes than average Americans, he said.
Well-to-do Americans have made enormous amounts of money because of the tax laws, he said.
The best evidence that corporations don’t need a tax cut is that corporate profits over the last three or four years have reached record highs while the stock market continues to break its previous records, he said.
Two thirds of the comments he hears on the campaign trail, meanwhile, have to do with the health care system in the country, Bjorkman said.
They are coming from small business owners, workers who can’t access insurance and poor people who tell nightmare stories, he said.
“We need to get affordable, timely health care for every American citizen,” he said. “No other issue tops that in my view.”
Part of the problem lies with the fact that insurance costs too much and leaves too many people on the sidelines, Bjorkman said. By the time they go to the hospital, they typically end up in the emergency room and that cost is borne by everyone else, he said.
“So much of it has to do with this fundamental problem that our Congress sadly is way too controlled by corporate special interest money,” he said.
“The first thing we do is we cannot continue to send people who we like to go to Washington who want a career there and are going to play the Washington game of raising the big money to fend off any challengers back in the home state in elections and then doing the bidding of big money donors,” Bjorkman said.

“Which is exactly how the tax bill got passed,” he said. “They sold you and me out to the wealthiest Americans and corporate interests.”
Had the GOP health care bill passed, it would have created “a morally and reprehensibly and financially abominable situation” because the 23 million people who didn’t get coverage would still get care but more erratically and at a much higher cost, he said.
Bjorkman believes in working to address the fundamental problems of not enough good jobs, strengthening the middle class and providing affordable health care. His decade on the bench convinced him that the chief enemies of crime are a good education and good job.
As a judge and a member of the pardons and parole board, Bjorkman said he saw people who were broken and struggling, where often the underlying problems dealt with drug addiction.
As a member of Congress, he said he would evaluate every program on the basis of how it impacts working families, the backbone of the nation, and how fiscally responsible it is.
The father of four sons, three of whom served in the military after the 2001 terrorist attacks, said he is an undying advocate for veterans.
He has no illusions about running as a Democrat in a red state, where Republican candidates have dominated in races for seats in the Legislature and Congress.
“We’re going to be massively outspent in this election, but I’m going to run the smartest, most fiscally conservative race that I can,” Bjorkman said.
But he is adamantly refusing to accept donations from political action committees.
“Some people question that; I’m not going to do it,” he said.
“I’m going to rely on you, my fellow citizens of all parties, because when we go to Washington I don’t want anybody to be able to make the claim that I am paid for by some special interest,” he said.
“My only client would be the people, and it’s a great thing to be able to say everywhere I go,” Bjorkman said.

Photo:

House of Representatives candidate Tim Bjorkman speaks to the District 22 Democratic forum on Thursday at the Huron Event Center.

Photo by Roger Larsen/Plainsman