Affordability Is Not a Slogan. It Is the Rent, the Tabs, and the School Bill.
Rocco for State Senate — SD 65
Minnesota is not expensive because families suddenly forgot how to budget. It is expensive because one party has run the state for most of the last fifty years and treated your paycheck as a slush fund.
In that half-century Minnesota has had one Republican governor — Tim Pawlenty. Democrats have held the House, Senate, and governor’s office together more than fifteen times. Every time they lock the trifecta, taxes go up, pet projects get funded, and working people are told to feel grateful.
The tax file
Minnesota’s top personal income-tax rate is 9.85 percent — among the highest in the country. The Tax Foundation ranks the state’s tax code 44th for competitiveness. General-fund collections eat a larger share of personal income here than in almost every other state. That is not a talking point. That is why a middle-class household in Saint Paul or West Saint Paul keeps less of what it earns than a household doing the same job across the river in Wisconsin or south in Iowa.
Sales tax sits at 6.875 percent state, higher once local add-ons hit. Gasoline is taxed at 32.6 cents a gallon in 2026, up from 28.5 cents before the indexing scheme Democrats wrote into law. License tabs were rewritten in 2023 so your car barely depreciates on paper. Kelley Blue Book says a three-year-old vehicle has often lost about 40 percent of its value. The state still taxes it like it is nearly new. A one-year “relief” deal does not unwind the formula. It is a pause button on a tax they intend to keep.
That is how Democrats pay for pet projects. They do not hold a bake sale. They raise the gas tax, slow the tab-fee decline, float vehicle-tax hikes, and call it “investment.” Bike lanes that cut driving lanes, five-year street closures that reopen with less capacity, a new state flag, and every social-program expansion that never gets a forensic audit — those bills land on the same people who already cannot afford groceries and rent.
Rocco’s position is the opposite. Transportation money should move cars and freight, not lecture commuters. If a project does not cut travel time for the majority, it is a hobby. Hobbies should not be paid with tab fees.
Schools: more money, same unions, kids who still cannot read
Minnesota spends about $17,100 per public-school pupil. That is not a poor state. On the 2024 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, fewer than half of students were proficient — about 45 percent in math and 50 percent in reading. On demographically adjusted NAEP rankings, Minnesota falls to the middle of the pack and near the bottom third in fourth-grade reading. Thirteen states beat Minnesota on fourth-grade reading while spending less per student.
The system still takes the full allocation for a child who cannot read at grade level, then fights any parent who wants that money to follow the student to a private school, a charter that works, or a tutor. Minnesota has no ESA and no voucher. Families get a limited tax credit and deduction. Other states now run universal choice. Here the teachers union keeps the check. The child keeps the deficit.
Rocco’s rule is simple: the dollar follows the student, not Education Minnesota. If a public school loses the child, it loses the revenue. That is the only incentive that has ever made a monopoly improve. Parents who want a private or faith-based school should not have to pay twice — once in taxes for a building their kid left, and again in tuition.
Calling that “indoctrination funding” is not an insult to teachers who actually teach reading. It is a description of a political machine that treats curriculum and staffing as union property and test scores as someone else’s problem. A graduate who cannot read or function in a job is not a branding issue. It is a stolen childhood paid for by the same high taxes.
Audit the state. Lock the fraud door.
You cannot fix affordability if you cannot see the books. Minnesota has run historic fraud through feeding programs, housing, and Medicaid-style billing. Juries convict. Judges toss verdicts. Defendants bounce to the next grant.
Rocco will push two hard rules:
- A yearly statewide audit of major spending — human services, education, transportation, and every program that has already produced a scandal. No more waiting for the FBI to do the Legislature’s job. If you cannot find the gap in the budget, you cannot close it.
- If you are kicked off a public program for alleged fraud, you do not get on another state program until the original fraud conviction is overturned. Not a cousin’s LLC. Not a rebranded nonprofit. Not a new “community partner” with the same officers. One case, one lockout, until a court wipes the conviction. That is how you stop the carousel.
What affordability means in SD 65
Cut the tax appetite. Stop funding hobbies with tab fees and gas taxes. Make school money portable. Audit every year. Keep fraudsters off the next program.
Fifty years of the same party produced the 9.85 percent rate, the indexed gas tax, the tab-fee formula, the $17,000-per-kid system that still graduates non-readers, and a fraud culture that treats grants as an industry. If you want a cheaper Minnesota, you do not vote for the people who priced it.
Stop voting for the same people who got us in this mess in the first place.
Stop voting BLUE no matter who. Vote RED instead, and together we can make a better tomorrow.