October 29, 2020 at 11:27 a.m.
Election profile Tiffany: Country must reopen to restore vitality of the Trump economy
Incumbent representative says nation must stand up against censorship
Election profile Tiffany: Country must reopen to restore vitality of the Trump economy
By Richard Moore-rmmoore1@frontier.com
Tiffany, who is facing Democrat Tricia Zunker in the November 3 general election, also says he will make the protection of free speech and American culture a top priority.
In his campaign, Tiffany has emphasized his deep roots in northern Wisconsin. He grew up on a dairy farm near Elmwood and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls with a degree in agricultural economics. For the last 30 years, he and his wife Chris have lived in the seventh congressional district, where they have raised three daughters and where Tiffany owned and operated Wilderness Cruises for 20 years.
He has also worked as a dam tender for 25 years on the Willow Flowage, and he is a former town supervisor in the town of Little Rice and served on the Oneida County Economic Development board of directors. He served one term in the state Assembly and was in his second state Senate term when he was elected to Congress.
Overcoming the
COVID economy
Tiffany said his top priority if re-elected is to help people survive the pandemic financially and then to restore what he calls the hugely prosperous pre-pandemic economy.
"The number one issue is having a bridge to get through this difficult time of Covid and getting back to better times," Tiffany told The Lakeland Times in an interview. "It seems like an eon ago, but it was only eight months ago that we had the best economy in a generation. And it's all about having that bridge to get through what has been these government-mandated lockdowns and getting to the other side where we re-open the economy."
To do that, Tiffany says the government must take a more precise approach with aid, though he says he supported the broad stimulus package enacted earlier this year, which included stimulus payments to Americans.
"I think it was appropriate that people were compensated for government-mandated shut downs of their businesses," he said. "That's a takings. So they should have been compensated for that, but I think we should be much more targeted now."
The congressman says he supports and signed a discharge petition - a petition requiring 218 signatures used to force a bill out of committee and to the House floor for a vote - that would use left-over Paycheck Protection Plan money to extend the program.
"At this point it is sunset, but there is $138 billion that's left, and we should authorize that and target it in particular to hospitality," he said. "Restaurants and hotels have just been devastated, and I think there should be a targeted approach that's taken to helping those businesses out."
Tiffany says he voted against House speaker Nancy Pelosi's stimulus plan.
"I voted against Pelosi's plan, the $2.2 trillion plan, because that was just a grab bag of all kinds of other stuff that had nothing to do about building a bridge," he said. "That was just about bailouts for people in high-tax states as well as states that have been profligate spenders, and we in Wisconsin should not be bailing out Illinois."
Tiffany said he and his office have already been successful in helping some who belong to another population group in crisis: Farmers.
"We actually helped a couple of segments of agriculture that did not initially qualify for the coronavirus food assistance program," he said. "Both ginseng growers and mink farmers did not initially qualify and my office worked closely with the White House to get that done. Once again I thought that was appropriate because they felt the impact of the shutdowns."
But Tiffany was also looking to the other side of the pandemic bridge, saying it was critically important to re-open the economy.
"We cannot continue the subsidies forever," he said. "Back in January, we were just starting to see, especially on the big agricultural products like dairy and beef, they were starting to turn the corner and it looked like 2020 was going to be a much better year than the previous six to seven years.
Then, of course, the pandemic hit, Tiffany said.
"It is really important for us to reopen," he said. "It's part of the reason we need to get past the shutdowns and get our economy back reopened so that we do not have to continue this very high subsidization of agriculture."
When the economy does normalize, Tiffany said, the top priority is to resume the course President Trump pursued in building a strong pre-pandemic economy.
"I believe there are three primary things that President Trump did during this term of his presidency to bring America to the prosperity that we saw in January and February," he said. "One is the tax reductions. People knew that their government was not going to take more money out of their pockets, therefore they were willing to invest."
The second thing is to continue Trump's regulatory reform, Tiffany said.
"Regulatory reform is very near and dear to my heart," he said. "Getting rid of two regulations for every one created is such an important policy because that red tape binds up individual lives."
The third pursuit is Trump's trade policies.
"President Trump has caused this country to rethink how we go about trade, and I think we are on the leading edge of very successful trade polices with USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement) having been passed, which is going to be beneficial replacing NAFTA," he said. "I think that if President Trump is able to win in November, he will hold China accountable. Clearly the communist Chinese do not want President Trump to win because they know he is going to hold them accountable on the issue of trade, and they have not had to be accountable on this issue. They have just taken from America."
Tiffany said he would also add a fourth important pursuit on the other side of the pandemic.
"We have to figure out a way to corral this debt and the deficit," he said. "It is out of control. Both Republicans and Democrats have failed on that issue. It is one of the main reasons I ran for the state Legislature back in 2010, and we were able to fix that here in Wisconsin. Now it's a much bigger animal at the federal level, but we need to get control of that and it starts by reining in unnecessary governmental spending."
For example, Tiffany said, some of the federal procurement processes must be reformulated.
"What we were seeing in the state is that it would cost 25 percent more to build a road when you had federal money in a project," he said. "We need to sweep away some of those requirements that are redundant and unnecessary. Also, the permitting process under NEEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) is just so cumbersome."
The NEPA process is required when a federal action is taken that may have impacts on the human and natural environment. It involves information gathering, analyzing, and surveying the potential environmental effects of proposed projects.
But Tiffany says the process is needlessly slow.
"We've been reviewing some projects around the country where we have seen examples of projects taking 17 years to go through the surveying process," he says. "It's so cumbersome, and because of that it makes it so costly to complete these projects. We have to be much smarter about these permitting processes, and if we can accomplish the goal of making sure that we have appropriate protections in place but do it in a much more expedited fashion, we can save a lot of money."
Law enforcement
Tiffany says Congress must provide the resources law enforcement needs to do their jobs.
"Republicans in the House have a proposal to spend $1.7 billion, and it's to have better training for law enforcement - more complete training - and also to fund 500,000 more body cameras to make sure we know what is happening at those interdictions where the police are in the community making an arrest," he said.
Tiffany said it is terrible to see the Democratic Party in big cities across America take the side of rioters and looters.
"What we're seeing is the demise of some our cities as a result of law enforcement not having the support of their locally elected officials, and as a result pulling back because they don't want to jeopardize their own lives," he said. "It is a disgrace to see what happened like in Madison and Minneapolis."
Take a look at Minneapolis right now, Tiffany said.
"Violent crime is up to a level they have never seen before," he said. "One of the most beautiful big cities in America, and it is in a downward spiral. Forty restauranteurs sent a letter to the mayor of Minneapolis about a month ago, saying that if he didn't change the perception of the city, they would all be out of business soon."
Tiffany said many big-city Democrats could no longer be called just liberals.
"It is disgusting to see what these socialists are doing - and it is no longer liberalism, these Democrat-elected officials in these big cities are socialists - they are destroying cities across America," he said.
Tiffany also took aim at Black Lives Matter, not the broad movement but the incorporated organization that has had an organizing hand in many of this year's riots.
"I believe all lives matter, including black lives matter, but the group Black Lives Matter, Inc., is anti-American," he said. "Two of the planks they believe in, one is that they believe in the end of the free enterprise system. In other words, entrepreneurism, creativity, all those things that made America great, they don't believe in it."
But there is another, even more dangerous belief they hold, Tiffany said.
"And the more dangerous part of Black Lives Matter, Inc., is that they believe in the end of the nuclear family," he said. "Could there be anything more devastating to civil society than to tear apart the family? I just say to people, 'I believe all lives matter but when you talk about Black Lives Matter, Incorporated, they are an anti-American group,' and some of the research that is going on at this point is showing that they are taking funding from communist Chinese organizations, which does not surprise me at all."
Social media censorship
Tiffany says Congress needs to act against the growing censorship of political viewpoints by giant tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter, including revisiting section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
That section generally allows online platforms to host or republish speech without being held legally responsible for what others post. The law was passed to allow creativity and innovation to flourish online, but, to maintain the liability protections, the platform providers are supposed to be content neutral, and many say new censorship policies violate that requirement.
"At a minimum Section 230 of the law needs to be rewritten," Tiffany said. "If they are going to get into the business of censorship, which is clear that they are doing, then their protections under 230 need to be rewritten, at a minimum."
Tiffany said he has been studying the issue, and he believes that social media companies are not fairly compensating those who do generate the content on their platforms.
"I think Facebook, Twitter, and some of the other social media outlets are enriching themselves while not doing the basic work of creating that content," he said. "I think that needs to be evaluated also."
Tiffany also says he want to help reorganize the executive branch of government to be more responsive and to attract a greater diversity of talent. To that end, he supports a bill by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) known as the Swamp Act.
The Swamp Act, or Strategic Withdrawal of Agencies for Meaningful Placement Act, would repeal the federal law requiring that executive branch agencies be located in or around the nation's capital.
According to govtrack.us, in an effort to encourage the existing D.C.-area agencies to move, the bill would prevent such agencies or departments from entering new lease agreements, or engaging in new construction or renovations to their current D.C.-area buildings.
"The richest six counties in America surround Washington, D.C.," Tiffany said. "They have enriched themselves with taxes from people across America. So the whole apparatus of our federal government in Washington, D.C., needs to be re-evaluated to see whether it is serving the interests of the American people."
Especially when you you look at the Midwest and much of the middle part of the country, Tiffany said, voters are saying very clearly that Washington, D.C., does not reflect who they are as a country and have too much power.
"If there is one thing I could do as a legislator, as a congressman, it is to take power away from Washington, D.C., because the decisions people make at the state and local level are almost always going to be better than if they are made by the federal government," he said. "There are all kinds of examples - health care, wolves - you can just go down the list where the federal government fails the people of this country, and they fail the people of this country because they use a cookie-cutter approach when regulations and rules are created that we all have to live by."
The thing is, Tiffany said, people in Wisconsin are far different from people in California, and the circumstances are different, too, from state to state.
"The whole notion of federalism really needs to be brought back to the fore, and we need to take power away from Washington, D.C.," he said.
Tiffany said he was the only legislator who has actually successfully moved a division of an agency in Wisconsin out of Madison, when he spearheaded the move of the DNR's forestry division from Madison to Rhinelander.
"We should be doing that type of thing in Washington, D.C.," he said. "The main reason to move them is that, just like Madison gets so insular, Washington, D.C., does the same thing. The federal government gets so insular, and they just talk to themselves. They don't interact with the rest of America."
Not only that, Tiffany said, but agencies miss out on recruiting talented personnel by attracting only those who want to live in and around Washington, D.C.
"So for, say, agricultural policy, you get some person who wants to live in Washington, D.C.," he said. "For the average kid who grows up on a farm who maybe doesn't want to farm but wants to remain in agriculture, they don't want to live in Washington, D.C. But if they had the opportunity to live in the suburbs of Kansas City, they might take that agricultural job. It's about who we are recruiting into these agencies. They are so insular and they all think the same."
In foreign policy, Tiffany has called for an end to the nation's one-China policy.
"This was a policy put in place in 1979 by President Carter and it recognized only mainland China, and that decision was panned by both Republicans and Democrats," he said. "So they developed a workaround to be able to recognize Taiwan, though not officially in the same way that we normally do."
Now it's time to recognize mainland China for what it is and who they are, Tiffany said.
"They suppress their ethnic minorities in western China," he said. "They are a bully. They've been skirmishing with India on their border there. They have basically taken over Hong Kong, which was once a free city. They have designs on taking over Taiwan, which is a democratically run country. They are stealing our intellectual property, including right out from under our noses in our major universities."
So now it's time to take on China, Tiffany said.
"We shouldn't do it in a way that provokes a war, not seeking that at all, but their aggressiveness cannot be allowed to continue," he said. "They want to be the global king. We have to make a decision with our policies coming out of Congress over the next decade: Is the 21st century going to be a China century or is it going to be another American century with free people across the world?"
Keeping America Great
Tiffany says he is keenly aware of the erosion of free speech in the U.S. and the parallel rise in censorship.
"One of the biggest concerns I have going forward is people being able to practice free speech in America, and us being able to continue our American culture," he said.
"We have people who, when they are tearing down statues across America, including those of Lincoln and Washington, they clearly have no concept of the greatness of America. We cannot allow them to destroy our culture."
Tiffany pointed to rioters who tore down two statues at the capitol in Madison, the Forward statue, a symbol of women's rights, and the statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, a Union Civil War soldier who was killed fighting to abolish slavery.
"Those are people who are ignorant of the culture of the state of Wisconsin and of who we are as a people," he said. "That must stop. Denying people the ability to share their political views in open forums by using force must stop. We have to stand up against that. Otherwise our country is going to end up in a really bad spot where we cannot practice our First Amendment rights."
Richard Moore is the author of the forthcoming "Storyfinding: From the Journey to the Story" and can be reached at richardmoorebooks.com.
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