Shawn's Campaign Platform
Quality Education for Our Kids
Iowa’s Educational Legacy
Iowa’s history is rooted in the belief education is the basis for prosperity. This sentiment was reflected by the 1980’s state slogan “The State of Minds” and when Iowa printed “Foundation in Education” on our 2004 state coin. At that time, Iowa had one of the top five public educational systems in the country. Iowans were proud of the educational legacy we gave to our children and grandchildren. Our Area Education Agencies were the model for the nation on how to best share resources to meet diverse student needs, especially in rural areas.
The Problem:
The past decade years of Republican dominated legislation have left our schools behind. We have slipped and now free falling down the ranks. Pat Grassley’s legislative agenda has underfunded schools to the point we currently rank in the bottom half in the nation for both per pupil funding and educational quality (https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics). Returning Iowa’s public schools to the top of the pack is a priority.
Under Pat Grassley’s leadership, the legislature dealt a devastating blow to public schools when they approved school vouchers. The result was a funneling of vital and limited public tax dollars away from public schools to private schools. Hiding under the guise of “school choice”, Iowa created a voucher system that gave parents our tax money to send their students to private schools, regardless of their financial need.
Guess what the private schools did — they raised their tuition on average 20-25%! Private schools still remain selective and hard to afford but now have more money than ever before. Public schools are unfairly left with the task of educating all students with fewer and fewer resources. School choice is hurting rural communities; it has turned into welfare for the wealthy and not helping the majority of folks, especially in Butler country. Pat Grassley is happy to take your hard earned tax dollars and give it to affluent families in urban centers going to private schools while rural schools struggle to meet their needs.
Kim Reynolds, Pat Grassley, and the current Republican legislature have all but abandoned our youngest learners. Early childhood education is an essential component of a quality education system, yet Reynolds and the legislature have done little to build this vital part of Iowa’s educational system. In fact, because they were too lazy to fill out the paperwork, they turned away $30 million dollars in federal funds that would have helped to build early childhood education in Iowa. Where do these federal funds come from? Well I pay federal taxes, and I bet a lot of you do too. I want to see my federal dollars working for my fellow Iowan families, not dismissed due to a chip on Kim’s shoulder.
The Solution:
- End the Education Savings Account/Voucher program
- Re-establish proper funding for public school – supplemental state aid increases that account for inflationary costs and competitive salaries for teachers and staff
- A Universal Full-Day Preschool program for 4-year olds
- Rebuild the Area Education Agencies
- Pay para-educators what they’re worth
- Incentivize teachers to stay in rural Iowa through commitment-dependent tax breaks, loan forgiveness, and housing credit.
- Increase funding for Iowa’s Regent Universities and Tuition Grants
Loss of Local Control and Individual Rights
The Problem
Republicans once valued a less intrusive government. No longer. Our current Pat Grassley-led state legislature continues to attack local control and personal freedoms while concentrating power to the executive branch in Des Moines. Consider these recent Iowa legislative actions:
- Taking away women’s reproductive choice
- Eliminating, or fundamentally changing, a third of the State’s boards and commission that have been important vehicles for public input and oversight, including the Iowa Civil Rights Commission
- Limiting the ability for cities to govern themselves (bond votes, reduced oversight of short-term housing, restricting local authority over topsoil and stormwater, multiple limits and restrictions on the amount of property taxes cities can levy, etc.)
- Passing anti-transgender laws and restricting gender-affirming care
- Controlling school building sales
- Restricting and assigning educational content in schools
This isn’t freedom, and attacking individual rights has become a significant part of why youth are leaving the state.
The Solution
- Pass legislation that reverses harm to vulnerable populations and supports and returns our civil rights and liberties.
- Let the professionals, the teachers, decide curriculum with full funding support and backing.
- Support the 1968 Home Rule and the ability of a city to self-govern. This includes reversing recent restrictions and limits on property tax levies and bonds, minimizing budget gaps with reasonable property tax rollbacks, supporting municipal zoning authority, and blocking threatened state takeover of the 1% local sales tax.
Iowa’s Land and Water Are Our Greatest Resources
Prosperity in Iowa is bound to the land. Rich soil, clean water, and fresh air have served generations of Iowans. Farmers are the heart of our rural livelihood and have built the strongest farm economy in the country. But, as times change, so does our understanding of how we work the land to provide our agricultural needs, and how we protect our soil, water and air so that the next generation of farmers can continue our legacy.
The Problem
For quite a few years now, Republicans for far too long have put on their cowboy boots and paraded around our local towns, all while touting they love farmers. Meanwhile, they legislate policies that cater to corporate consolidation and the monopolization of our family farms. They support eminent domain of farmland for private companies to profit. They ignore science and turn away from new technologies that can make farmers partners in protecting our natural resources. The deregulation they support has polluted our air and water as we watch our soil vanish down the Mississippi.
The Solution
With the right policies, we can protect our waterways and improve our air quality as we continue to grow food and fuel for Iowa’s families and the rest of the world. Iowans shouldn’t have to choose between clean water and rural livelihoods.
- We need to support our farmers by investing in technology, agriculture research, and subsidized crop diversification.
- We need to strengthen, not weaken, protections for water quality in areas adjacent to large contained animal feeding operations, especially in the karst terrain of Northeast Iowa.
- Iowa’s last groundwater plan was created in 1985. Iowa must make creating a new comprehensive groundwater plan a priority and for the benefit of Iowa’s future, the DNR should take a conservative, cautionary approach and limit water access permits to industries.
Taxes and Services
The Problem
The Republicans in charge of budgeting appropriations have generated some of the largest surpluses in state history by underfunding priorities, like education and health care. While our infrastructure crumbles and our most valued resources leave the state, our current state legislature, led by Pat Grassley, have gone on to use the surplus as an excuse to cut the corporate tax rate and implement an aggressive flat tax.
It’s easy to campaign on tax cuts and say more money will be in your pocket when you don’t mention all the programs, services, and infrastructure you are willing to let go.
“Pat Grassley’s goal is to move Iowa away from tax based funding to fee based funding. Be prepared to pay for your children to participate in music and sports. Expect to pay entrance fees to use state and county parks. You will be paying more for your boat registration and hunting licenses. As they reduce property and income taxes, fees will be raised to maintain the few amenities that remain, shifting the funding burden onto people who already struggle to make ends meet” -Brian Birgen, Waverly City Council Member
The truth is flat-tax structures favor the wealthy in a multitude of ways and trickle-down economics simply does not work. A flat tax will lead to lost revenue for the state which cannot be covered by the Taxpayer Relief Fund. In order to balance the budget, the state will need to raise sales tax and/or make more cuts to public services, such as roads, bridges, education, and healthcare. When those taxes are hiked, nearly every resident of Butler and Bremer counties will pay a disproportionate higher share of their income compared to the wealthy, all with reduced services. Read more at: https://itep.org/the-pitfalls-of-flat-income-taxes/
The Solution:
- We need a living-wage that meets the needs of Iowans.
- Too many adults are forced to choose between working or providing care for dependents, whether children or aging parents. We need to increase affordable quality daycare by increasing childcare grants and Child Dependent Care tax exemptions.
- Empower and partner with local governments to create a system to reinvigorate our small towns.
- Create jobs by investing in public infrastructure projects.
- Incentivize Iowans to stay and raise their families with Iowa Grants and forgivable loans for public service employees like teachers, nurses, and medical providers.
- To build a thriving economy for all Iowans, we need a progressive tax structure designed to strengthen the middle class, lift people out of poverty, and invest in the people of Iowa.
A Healthy Iowa
The Problem:
Health outcomes in Iowa are growing poorer by the hour, and it’s past time for our state legislators to respond. For the second year in a row, Iowa has the second-highest cancer rates in the country. We have the greatest increase in cancer rates in America, especially in breast, prostrate, lung, and melanoma cancers.
Infant mortality rates are up 30%. Over a quarter of Iowa families live in maternal care deserts. Rural hospitals are closing and nursing shortages have plagued the ability of seniors to find long-term care both in and out of the hospital.
By eliminating abortion care, Iowa will have fewer OB GYN’s willing to work here. We see one example by recognizing the low number of OB GYN providers available in Iowa. I personally experienced the near-death of my wife due to delay in “abortion” care while my wife had a complicated miscarriage at 13 weeks pregnant. That is right, a miscarriage is an abortion. The delay for an OB GYN to come to the Waverly Health Center meant excessive blood loss when the ER provider was not comfortable performing the care my wife needed at the time. If Iowa does not have OB GYN providers available to help women with problematic miscarriages and pregnancy issues, you will be more losing the lives of young mothers needlessly.
Vital mental health services have been decimated by the closing of all but two of Iowa’s psychiatric hospitals under the past decade of Republican “leadership”. We have abysmally low numbers of mental health providers and rank worst in America in the number of psychiatric beds per capita.
The Republican strategy of privatizing Medicaid has left vulnerable Iowans, a majority of them children, without access to critical care. With Iowa tax dollars, the CEOs of the private state-selected companies have gotten rich, while rural hospitals and clinics do not receive enough reimbursements to stay afloat. Additionally, Governor Reynolds’ efforts to resist Affordable Care Act provisions have cost Iowa families millions of dollars.
Pat Grassley has made a platform of going after Iowa’s most vulnerable families. He is so out of touch that he wanted to reduce SNAP benefits as a means to control state spending, the only problem being, SNAP benefits are paid from the federal budget not the state.
Current Republicans have made it a habit to turn down federal aid for Iowa’s families. In addition to turning down almost $30 million in childcare funds, Republicans turned down an additional 29 million dollars in federal funding for summer food programs to address food insecurity for Iowa’s children. Remember who pays federal taxes? Iowans!
The Solution:
- To start reducing cancer, require and subsidize Radon mitigation.
- Increase availability of reverse osmosis filtration in residences, especially those on rural water.
- Continue to prioritize access and funding for early detection (for example colon screening 35 and older, mammography, skin checks).
- Increase funding for cancer clusters and work from the bottom up – known contaminations.
- Increase penalties for environmental non-compliance.
- Invest in infrastructure improvements, like high-speed internet, to make tele-health access available in rural areas.
- Return healthcare choices like abortion to Iowans. Government needs to stay out of medical decisions made between patients and their doctors; there are unintended and unwanted consequences to the governmental overreach.
- Incentivize skilled healthcare workers in rural communities through commitment-dependent tax breaks, loan forgiveness, and housing credit.
- Fund strategies for Medicaid to reduce administrative cost for insurance companies while maximizing benefits to support people, hospitals, and clinics
- Raise the number of care center inspectors.
- Support community based-services, like adult-day care programs.
- Strengthen and protect SNAP, rollback asset disqualification, facilitate enrollment, and accept Federal AID for summer EBT programs.