Tim Walz Announces Paid Leave In Minnesota, Precise Number Of F*cks Left To Give
He's got a lot for Minnesota, not so much for Republicans in the Legislature.
Note: Shortly before Robyn finished writing, ICE killed a woman in Minneapolis. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had a statement demanding answers and asking for calm, but it is not the topic of this post. We will be covering it shortly.
It’s still really disappointing that Tim Walz has decided not to run for a third term because of all the right-wing conspiracy theories he’s been inundated with, but his newfound freedom does seem to have given him a little spring in his step.
Walz held a press conference on Tuesday celebrating the launch of a paid leave program in the state — implemented on time and under budget. From now on, Minnesotans will be able to apply for up to 12 weeks paid leave (funded by the state) in order to take care of and bond with a new baby, take care of themselves when they are sick, or take care of a sick family member, like people in every other wealthy nation on earth. How nice is that?
As the small business owners who spoke at the conference explained, this will save them money and help them retain good employees — rather than losing them to big corporations that can afford to provide employees with benefits like these. One employer shared that, while the taxes to fund the program cost about $1000 a year per employee, allowing one employee to take three weeks of maternity leave cost him about $20,000 in total (paying her, plus paying contractors to take over for her during that time), on top of having to do a lot of her work himself in order to pick up the slack.
Of course, it’s obviously also good for workers, who will be able to take care of these things without fear of going broke or losing their jobs. It will be good for babies, who will get crucial bonding time with their parents. It will be good for everyone, except for people who for some reason want things to be unpleasant.
Walz spoke at the end of the conference, addressing both his plan to end his campaign and the paid leave program. The first reporter to ask him a question asked if he left on his own accord or because of pressure from Democrats, and Walz was clear that it was his own decision. His reasoning, apart from the obvious conspiracy nonsense, was that Trump was specifically targeting his opponents, that he was cutting off federal funds to states he doesn’t like, and he didn’t want Minnesota to be punished because Trump has a hate-on for him. Fair!
He also pointed out that, while everyone is het up about the supposed fraud in Minnesota, “the biggest fraud trial in the country is taking place in Mississippi today, with $100 million of welfare fraud” and yet Mississippi is not in danger of losing any funding. Of course, that trial involves Ted DiBiase Jr., who happens to be a white guy and former WWE wrestler, not a Somali immigrant. After all, what’s the fun in getting het up about “fraud” if one is not using it to attack people of an ethnicity one does not care for?
Naturally, one reporter asked Walz about the “concerns” people might have about fraud in the paid leave program. Walz explained that the program is being run by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), which also runs their unemployment program — and pointed out that Minnesota and Iowa have the most secure unemployment programs in the country, and that they have put many safeguards in place to catch any fraud before it happens. Still, he said “the buck stops here” with regard to things going wrong with the program and said he would take full responsibility for anything that does.
That being said, however, he also wants the damn credit when things go well.
He said:
If the buck stops with me on when there’s problems, the buck stops with me on successes. Not a single Republican supported this, so every Minnesotan from here on forward, whoever uses this program, there is no bit of thanks that would go to the Republican legislators who did all they could to stop this, so I will take full responsibility.
We have safeguards in place. We’ll do that. But I think the report on this is — as you hear in the stories here — I’ll take some credit for that because we put this program in place. We got done. We implemented it. We did the work for 2.5 years and lots of things work. Your highways get plowed. I’ll take credit for that, too. The Republicans voted against my budget bill that did the work with that. Our schools have the money to pay their teachers. I’ll take credit for that, too.
Good! He should!
I always say, the problem with a lot of Democrats is that they tend to have a bit of an “I got you this gift but it’s okay if you hate it!” energy when it comes to social programs, and it’s pretty great to hear someone be entirely unapologetic about the fact that this is going to be a good thing for people that Republicans did not want.
Walz also challenged Republicans in the Legislature who are so convinced (without any actual evidence of anything specific, mind you) that he purposely did nothing to prevent fraud that was already occurring before he was elected, to help him prevent fraud with this program — if they know so much about how to do that.
“I need the Legislature to help me on prevention. Uh it’s pretty easy after the fact to say this happened. Uh, they’re really good at that. They’re not so good on the front end. So I think that would be good,” he said. He also invited the federal government, if they are so concerned with fraud, to send people down to help him combat that instead of sending 2000 DHS agents down to combat Somali immigrants.
Of course, it’s also clear that the point of this “fraud” hysteria, outside of going after him in particular and Somali immigrants in particular, was to kill all social programs to begin with.
“The Republicans’ goal is to have none of those programs,” he said. “And I can guarantee you one way to ensure there’s no fraud. Just don’t do the program. Just don’t do the program. And then you will look like states who rank at the bottom in every single initiative. So we have a responsibility to continue to do better on this. But I’m going to take credit when we’re ranked at the top on almost every single category because of these programs.”
When asked again about why he didn’t want to run again, Walz reiterated that it was more important for him to do his job (and his family’s safety) than to worry about a campaign right now.
No, I think it’s a personal decision. It’s effectiveness. I never took this job to be governor. I took the job to pass things like paid family medical leave. I took this job to get our children food. I took this job and what I will continue to do for a year is I will protect every single person in this state, and I had an announcement to them on on our LGBT community, especially our trans community, “Stay the hell out of Minnesota”’ for the the the folks who want to hassle those people. These are our neighbors.
So for me it became if I can be as effective doing that and it’s clear, look, I don’t think any governor in history has had to fight a war against the federal government every single day. And now it’s reaching down into our commissioners. And look, what Donald Trump tweeted the other night that put the Hortman children at risk. They have to look at security. Put my family at risk again.
Walz made it clear that not worrying about reelection frees him up to do everything in his power to care for Minnesotans and to fight Republican nonsense — so while the GOP may see this as a win, they may have unleashed a beast.
He also chastized Republicans in the state and all over for not saying anything about Trump’s harassment of the Hortman children, as well as the press for not pressuring Republicans in office to take an actual stand.
“Where is their plan to push back on the president again for God’s sakes?” he asked. “The children of a murdered speaker and they can’t speak up and say, ‘Mr. President, this is wrong. Stop it.’ And you write a story that one retired legislator said it and one member. How can you not have every single one of them saying this is wrong and I’m going to fight this without having to spend any time worrying about the politics of this?”
Because they don’t want to go against him, duh, and because they’re also pretty sure at this point that promoting horrific and vile conspiracy theories is more likely to hurt their ideological opponents than it is to hurt them. And, clearly, they’re not wrong.
Tim Walz had the right idea when he called Republicans weird, and it remains disappointing that the Dems decided to back off on that. He also has the right idea when it comes to actually touting and bragging on these social programs as a necessary good that will improve people’s lives rather than treating them like vegetables one is sneaking into their kids’ mashed potatoes “for their own good.” It clearly worked for Mamdani, and it’s working for other Democrats who have decided that being demure isn’t the way.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Tim Walz is a fundamentally decent person. Unfortunately, under what I call Biden's Law, no good deed goes unpunished. American politics, especially in this day and age, chews up the fundamentally decent and spits them out.
And just to underline the point he makes, people vote for the GOP to hurt others. That is the thing about sadopopulism; it feels very good for hateful people. But it is very stupid and counterproductive.
Only 24 hours after open heart and thoracic surgery, little Yasmeen is sitting up, talking, has pink cheeks, her pulse O2 level is at 99%, and she has consumed 3 lollipops. Her mother, however, looks like she just escaped from a war zone…
https://substack.com/profile/155713940-queen-meabh/note/c-196582362