Governor Scott Walker is making the tough choices needed to avoid financial ruin in Wisconsin. Like most states, Wisconsin is facing a budget deficit caused in part by excessive pay and benefits for public employees. Governor Walker is tackling this problem head on, rightly proposing to bring public employees’ compensation in line with the private sector.

In response, President Obama, national Democrats and their union allies have gone on the attack, helping organize protests that have flooded the Wisconsin capitol and shutdown public schools in Milwaukee and Madison. They’re even lending moral support to the state Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to avoid a vote.

The nation’s governors don’t need a lecture from a President who has never balanced a budget. On both the federal and state level, we need leaders who will make the tough decisions and stand up to the public employees unions.

As a conservative governor in a liberal state, I regularly battled with the public employees union and am familiar with the sort of tactics we’re seeing in Madison. When I proposed reforms to public employees’ benefits, we had protests and one of the longest transit strikes in American history. But we won in Minnesota because average taxpayers supported the reforms – and I’m confident that Governor Walker will win in Wisconsin.

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Last week, I had the honor of speaking to a robust group of conservatives in New Hampshire — and I saw a level of energy within our movement that I haven’t seen in a long time. People are fired up. And not just in the Granite State. Everywhere I travel these days, Americans are standing up and declaring themselves ready to fight for the principles and values that made this the greatest country in history – principles and values that are under attack by the Democrats in Congress and the current administration.

Today, the federal government owns or controls the nation’s largest insurance company, two of the three American auto manufacturing companies, the two entities that hold a majority of our mortgages, the entire student loan industry, wide swaths of the banking industry and now a major portion of the American health care delivery system.

Think about it. With his individual mandate, President Barack Obama and the federal government are now forcing Americans to buy a good or service simply for no other reason than they are alive. Their reform will lead to higher taxes and higher premiums – and not reduce the exploding health care costs that are the underlying problem of America’s health care system.

Let me put it bluntly: America is headed in the wrong direction.

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Today, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on Senator Max Baucus’ health care overhaul.  Like most Americans, I believe that our health care system needs to be reformed.  However, this bill is a tax and spending bill masquerading as a health reform bill.  It gives government bureaucrats far too much power and encroaches on freedom more than any legislation since LBJ’s Great Society experiment.  It is bad for the country and bad for the economy.

 Senate Democrats are pushing a vote on the 1,000-page bill now because the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the bill cost “only” $829 billion over the next 10 years. In truth, the bill raises taxes immediately, but the benefits do not kick in for another four years, so the 10-year numbers are distorted. This is an expensive experiment that cuts Medicare, and exacerbates state government budget problems by dramatically expanding Medicaid without providing additional funding.

How do the Democrats propose to pay for the rest of the new spending? There are a massive amount of tax increases in the bill, including over $200 billion in tax increases on insurance premiums, new taxes on individuals and employers, and over $120 billion in new taxes on medical device makers and other health care businesses.  All of these tax increases concern me, but the latter category does so especially: My state is the home of Medtronic, Boston Scientific, 3M, St. Jude Medical and other medical technology makers that employ 60,000 Minnesotans and save and improve countless lives. Increasing taxes on these businesses would not only be an unwise burden on these employers, but would siphon money otherwise spent on research and development.  It would also risk the cost of increased taxes being passed on, directly or indirectly, to those who rely on such devices or who cover their cost.

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