October 31, 2022 at 11:24 a.m.
Ausman: Tiffany,Republicans are hurting people
Democratic challenger says the GOP isn't what it used to be
Ausman: Tiffany,Republicans are hurting people
Ausman was born and raised in Merrill and grew up in northern Wisconsin Republican circles; his step-dad sold fire department and law enforcement equipment throughout the region. His step-dad's first cousin was a Republican secretary of agriculture of Wisconsin.
"My brother went to Ripon, played piano in the Republican lounge," Ausman says. "When I went to the Little White Schoolhouse [where the Republican Party was born] when we would visit him, it was a shrine because it was an emblem of the party that was formed to abolish slavery."
Tiffany has turned his back on that legacy, Ausman says.
"Tom says he's proud to be from the party of Abe and yet he's one of 14 legislators to vote against Juneteenth Day, which is to celebrate the abolishment of slavery, which is why the Republican Party was formed," he said in a recent interview with The Lakeland Times. "I'm like, you are not a Republican. You are the RINO [Republican In Name Only] in the room."
The point is, Ausman says, the Republican Party has changed.
"I grew up with the Republicans," he says. "What I try and help people understand is, this is not the Republican Party of 45 or 50 years ago. And maybe it shouldn't be. But I look at what is going on. Tom is trying to carry this banner, and it makes me nauseous at times."
Ausman said he was busy investing in two businesses - and about to launch one - when he realized that Tiffany would be running unopposed.
"And I said no," he said. "This guy is hurting people. He's voted against lowering the cost of insulin. Voted against the infant formula funding bill. He's voted twice against our veterans. He voted against Honoring Our Pact Act to help with their exposure to toxins. He voted against the community policing bill."
That latter bill would give $60 million over five years to law enforcement agencies with fewer than 125 officers to purchase such things as body cameras, provide de-escalation training, and improve recruitment and retention.
"One of the biggest problems is that we have lost a lot of law enforcement officers," Ausman said. "We need more law enforcement. We need to pay them better. We need to equip them for the threats that are up against them."
That said, while the bill passed the House with a large bipartisan majority, it attracted criticism from left and right. Liberal Democrat Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) of Madison voted against the bill, for instance, citing accountability issues.
Some conservatives say the heart of the bill is to direct most of the dollars to "de-escalation" training - techniques to engage in community relations rather than the traditional policing essential to protecting the public - while civil rights groups said the bill would enable equipment purchases that would continue to encourage the militarization of local police departments.
Ukraine
Like most Democrats, Ausman is supportive of the billions of dollars the United States has given to Ukraine in its war with Russia and says he believes the constituents of the district, including Republicans, agree with him.
"I've put more than 25,000 miles [on my vehicles] since I started this in May," he says. "I have talked to hundreds and hundreds of Republicans and independents. They do not agree with voting against aid to Ukraine. It's an aberration when you find someone who does. Folks agree with supporting Ukraine."
His reasoning is straightforward: It's the right thing to do.
"I'm not a politician," he said. "I've done a lot of business in Europe and around the world. This is a sovereign nation. Russia invaded a sovereign democracy. You have a sovereign nation. Zelensky and his wife, they could have left at any time in the beginning. They stayed. They are incredibly inspirational. They have stayed in the heart of it because they love their country."
But supporting Ukraine in the war is in the United States' strategic interest as well, Ausman says.
"Putin has said that he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union and that would also mean other nations that are part of NATO," he says. "Ukraine would just be the start. Who's next? And then we would be bound to have to send troops. I don't want our troops there. By supplying them money to defend themselves, which is what they are doing and now making great gains at that, we are here to support them to keep their democracy."
Ausman says he knows a lot of people who have family in Ukraine, and they think the aid is great and that it is helping.
But while he said he doesn't hear criticism of the aid, Ausman said he heard something else.
"I heard a president [Trump] trying to blackmail Zelensky into investigating Joe Biden and his son on a phone call," he said. "That was a U.S president trying to blackmail the president of another country to do something for political purposes here in the United States."
But isn't that exactly what Biden did when he asked the Saudis to delay their announcement of a cut in oil production until past the mid-terms and then threatened to cut off arms sales when they made the announcement anyway? Ausman was asked. The Saudis had issued a statement that the Biden administration asked for a month delay in announcing the cuts.
"They have yet to explain what that meant or anything else,"Ausman said. "If we tried to pressure them from a political perspective, for the political elections, that was wrong. But all I've seen right now is the statement that the Saudi government released and nothing has been explained what has been said by 'a month,' whether someone said it in an incorrect fashion or whatever, if that was what was done, it was wrong."
Inflation
Ausman says the Federal Reserve has to be aggressive in fighting inflation with higher interest rates.
"We have been behind the ball," he said. "We have let too much money flow freely, inexpensively, for way too long. We have primed the pump. This has gone on for a decade, a long time, and now we are paying the price because the Fed is normally supposed to keep the interest rates about equal to what inflation is and obviously we are way behind the curve on that."
Ausman said that Tiffany would blame Joe Biden for his stimulus spending but that it was Trump who injected the first multi-trillion dollar stimulus into the economy.
"The injection under Biden was actually less, but that's not what has caused inflation," he said. "Inflation has been caused by three cataclysmic events. We've had a pandemic that we haven't experienced in more than a hundred years. It shut down our economy. With that came cataclysmic event number two, that is what happened with employment. A lot of people decided not to come back into the work cycle."
Ausman said it was wrong to continue to blame pandemic benefits as the reason for people not working.
"Those programs ended a long time ago," he said. "No one is sitting on a pandemic-related benefit and choosing not to work."
Rather, Ausman said, many baby boomers just decided to retire and not come back - many truck drivers among them - while others chose to start their own businesses, among other varied reasons.
And, of course, Ausman said, there was cataclysmic event number three, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"That's what affected oil prices," he said. "Everything is made from oil. Unless you're wearing cotton or silk or a pure thing, it's made from petroleum, plastic. Everything is ultimately a derivative of plastic, so when fossil fuel prices rise, the cost of everything goes up."
Ausman said campfire wood for sale on the side of the road might cost more not because of anything about the wood itself but because every other cost for the owner of the wood had gone up.
"It's a spiral," he said. "It's not just Joe Biden. We've had these three cataclysmic events and we will work through them. We worked through them in the '70s. The Fed has to be aggressive."
Green energy
Green energy is the nation's future, Ausman says.
"How do we make things out of plants instead of fossil fuels?" he asks. "That's our future. You can grow algae off our coasts and algae is a high energy organic material. You can grow volumes of it. When we start making things out of plants instead of fossil fuels, that's our future."
Ausman says Tiffany calls that a green energy fantasy, but he says it's not.
"Wisconsin has the 18th greatest wind potential in all 50 states," he said. "Yet travel around the state and tell me how many wind farms you see."
Ausman says that number pales in comparison to those in neighboring states, but it would be a win-win for everybody.
"You put a wind farm 500 feet or 1,000 feet in because most people are concerned about site pollution, and now not only farmers can make money off their land, but forestry owners can make money through royalties and leases to the power companies," he said.
Ausman says Tiffany wants to do away with subsidies for wind and solar but not for fossil fuels.
"He says [wind and solar subsidies] are just going to millionaires, yet he has no problem subsidizing the fossil fuel industry when they are making the greatest profits in their history," he said. "We're not moving away from fossil fuels tomorrow. It's going to be with us, but we have to continue the gradual evolution."
Social Security and taxes
The Social Security Trust fund is in long-term trouble, but Ausman says the funding problem is easily fixed.
"It's solved in one day," he said. "Tom wants to privatize it. Horrible idea. Of all the hundreds of Republicans I've talked to, not one supports that."
[Note: In his interview, Tiffany said he wants to protect and guarantee Social Security, not privatize it, and to do that by not creating new entitlements that are impossible to fund without undermining Social Security and Medicare.]
"It's solvable in one day," Ausman said about the funding issue. "Most folks do not know that when currently someone makes $147,500 a year, they stop contributing to the Social Security fund for the remainder of the year. All you do is eliminate the cap on contributions. That's all you have to do and Social Security is solved."
Ausman says another issue with Social Security is that, until 1984, Social Security benefits were not taxed.
"Then in 1984 they started taxing them and the wealthy got huge tax breaks," he said. "That was the compromise and it was a sucky compromise. When Social Security was originated, it was not meant to be taxed."
As for taxes, Ausman praised the new corporate minimum tax passed in the recently enacted so-called Inflation Reduction Act, and he criticized Tiffany for voting against it.
"We've had a major change in tax policy, which Tom Tiffany voted against, that corporations have to pay a minimum 15 percent tax," he said. "Why Amazon or anybody else can make all the money that they do and not pay any taxes on it is just ridiculous."
How is it that someone who can make a lot of money by using tax loopholes can pay less taxes than someone making $20,000 a year? Ausman asks.
"That doesn't make any sense to me," he said. "You know everybody needs to pay their fair share. We had a president who boasted about not paying taxes. I take pride in paying my taxes. I don't want to pay more than I have to, but I understand that by paying taxes I'm here to help those who have not benefited in the ways I have."
It's about shared sacrifice, Ausman said. He also said he supports a global minimum corporate tax.
"It's been talked about for several years now, so you can't have these tax havens, holding their money in Ireland and other places and waiting until we would have a tax holiday here in the United States, and then they bring all their earnings back," he said. "There needs to be minimum taxes so that you don't shift among the different countries."
The same thing with individuals, Ausman said.
"It's just not fair that someone who makes a tremendous amount of money can constantly pay less taxes than someone who is on the lower economic scale," he said. "There's something wrong with the system."
Abortion and the Second Amendment
Ausman believes abortion should be a woman's choice to make.
"My perspective on it is, our forefathers and foremothers were very faith-based," he says. "There were some atheists, but the majority were very faith-based. But they were very insistent that we were set up as a secular nation. We all have the ability to worship when, where, and how we choose."
What we can't do is impose those religious views on others, Ausman said.
"And abortion is a religious topic," he said. "You have half the world that doesn't believe that life begins until after birth. So it's not like if you go out and murder someone who is already on this earth. One hundred percent of everybody knows that's wrong."
Similarly, Ausman said, you don't steal from people because everybody knows that's wrong.
"But this [abortion] is where you have half the world believing one thing and half the world something else," he said. "It's a religious topic, and again, going back to the Republican Party that I remember is the government staying out of people's business. And this is the most personal decision that a woman will ever make and I don't understand why the government has any right intruding on this incredibly personal decision. Butt out."
The beauty is, Ausman continued, the majority of babies born into the world are welcomed by their moms.
"It's a minority of babies that unfortunately a mother has to make a choice for whatever reason, but we shouldn't be involved in that," he said. "That's a horrible choice that they have to make."
On gun rights, Ausman says he supports Second Amendment rights.
"I own guns," he said. "I'm not here to take away guns."
Ausman takes four positions he says that even 99.9 percent of Republicans agree with. The first is that gun clips do not need to hold more than five to six bullets.
"I don't believe in a ban on assault rifles," he said. "I think that's an aesthetic thing. I own a British 303 Army officer's rifle from World War II, more powerful than an AK-47. But it's one pull, one bullet. You don't need more than five bullets in a clip. Anyone who hunts, you don't take more than one or two shots at your prey, maybe a third if something's running. But you don't need 50 to 100 bullets."
To be sure, there are those who believe they do need 50 to 100 bullets, and Ausman says they can be accommodated.
"I'm open to, just like you can't own an automatic weapon but you can get a permit to own one, so you go to a permitting process or whatever if you want a clip because there are people who truly believe we are going to be invaded by another country or whatever and they need to have that 50-to-100 bullet clip," he said. "Well I think we can accommodate them by going through a process."
Second, Ausman believes there should be a national database so that "when someone is purchasing a firearm anywhere by anyone, we can ensure they are entitled to purchase a firearm," as his website states.
"Universal background checks," Ausman told The Times. "Right now the loophole is private party sales, and anyone who buys a weapon we need to know that that person is entitled to purchase a weapon."
Third, Ausman believes in red flag laws.
"Red flag laws to me are when someone has been legally - you can't just report them to the sheriff and the sheriff takes away their weapon - when a person has been legally deemed a danger to themselves and others, you remove their weapons," he said. "When they are legally deemed no longer a danger to themselves, they may have them back."
Finally, Ausman says, if someone is purchasing a firearm for the first time they need to take a gun safety course.
"There are certain basic things that you need to know when you get a weapon for the first time," he said. "So you have to take a gun safety course."
Ausman says most everybody agrees on those four points.
"Not 100 percent, but nine out of 10, if not closer to 10 out of 10, agree with those four things," he said. "So why can't we get it done?"
Finally, Ausman says Tiffany has recorded too many absences: "In the last Congress, the 116th Congress, he's missed 350 percent more votes than the average congressperson."
According to ProPublica, in the 116th Congress Tiffany missed 6.9 percent of votes in that session, making him only the 304th most absent member of the House. In the 117th Congress (2021-22), he missed 4.6 percent of votes, making him the 34th most absent member of the House.
In the end, Ausman says he is in the race because he really cares about people.
"I've had a tremendous time meeting with folks," he said. "I would be an independent. I vote for who I believe is the best person. But when I decided to run, I knew I couldn't win as an independent. I don't know where the Republican Party is today. And I found out that I line up really neatly with the Democratic Party."
Even so, Ausman says he is independent minded.
"I will represent everybody," he said. "I don't care what anybody's political affiliation is. What I care about is that they have the ability to go about their lives unfettered by government except for what government needs to step in and do. We all just want to live our lives."
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