Alaska Dairy Coalition: Wisconsin politician’s bill taxes milk buyers

Watch out, fellow Alaskans! One of the country’s most liberal congresswomen, Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin, is at it again! Reliable sources in Washington inform us that Baldwin is cooking up a new scheme to tax our milk. That’s right, to further increase milk prices that can be as high as $15 a gallon in the Bush!

Rep. Baldwin, who professes to care about the less fortunate in society, proposes new legislation that would drive up the price of milk for those Alaskans who can least afford it. Apparently, it’s that time of the political silly season when Baldwin feels the need to pander for campaign dollars to Outside dairy cooperatives’ political action committees (PACs) that have been pushing this crazy proposal.

Evidently, Baldwin doesn’t understand that Alaska’s dairy consumers and producers don’t want our milk taxed just so that greedy Outside dairy interests can pick our pockets. According to dairy farm families opposed to the milk tax in the Lower 48, the folks behind Baldwin’s scheme are the same “dairy promotion mafia” types that waste farmers’ mandatory promotion dollars on fancy resorts, limousines and other extravagances that do nothing to benefit farmers.

If you don’t believe me, see the waste for yourself at www.themilkweed.com/USDEC-Limo.jpg, where you can see a fancy limousine for the U.S. Dairy Export Council, a group funded with milk tax dollars. The waste, fraud and abuse involving mandatory dairy promotion dollars have gotten so bad that farmers are fighting back — and winning — through the courts.

But now the liberal, tax-and-spend Baldwin is in a tight race for her House seat in Wisconsin. Apparently Baldwin feels she needs to score some cheap points with rural constituents in her district at our expense by taxing our milk. Instead of picking on poor Alaskans, Baldwin should increase the milk tax on her own constituents if she thinks it is such a good idea.

Thank goodness, our lawmakers are standing up for us. The first time that Baldwin and her allies tried to tax Alaska milk she was stopped dead in her tracks by Sen. Lisa Murkowski and a bipartisan coalition including Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Congressman Don Young and their counterparts from Hawaii and Puerto Rico. In the state Legislature, Reps. Bob Lynn, Ethan Berkowitz and their allies have led the fight against the milk tax.

Lisa Murkowski and her colleagues, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, said, “Imposition of the milk tax on Alaskan, Hawaiian and Puerto Rico milk producers would harm their ability to produce milk at competitive prices and would result in price hikes for consumers of milk products including children, low-income families, Alaska Natives, bakeries and other small businesses.”

Baldwin wants to tax Alaskans so that she can get more dollars for her campaign at our expense. Don’t let her get away with it. Contact your senators and congressmen, state legislators, school board members, mayors and other elected officials today. Ask them to join you in making sure Tammy Baldwin’s milk tax never sees the light of day in Alaska.

Jlona Richey is the director of government relations for the Alaska Dairy Coalition.