Issues that top the list:

Jobs and Economic Development: Getting people back to work and creating new job opportunities has to be our first priority. We need to do everything we can to bring dependable, living-wage jobs to all of Minnesota, and we need to keep the good jobs that we have by refusing to reward privatizing, outsourcing, and offshoring of good union jobs and instead reward keeping them in Minnesota where they belong. We need to support and sustain the natural resource industries that are a key part of the economy of northeastern Minnesota, and perhaps most importantly, we need to develop the new green, renewable energy job opportunities that can be the key to our 21st century security and prosperity.

Health Care: We need to follow the principles of the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition and establish a system that:
  
   Provides universal and equal coverage,
  
   Restores to doctors and patients the ultimate authority over decisions about
   medical care,
  
   Ensures patients the freedom to choose among doctors, hospitals and other
   providers,
  
   Removes the power of private corporations to make health policy, and gives this
   power to the community, and
  
   Uses a single-payer financing mechanism to control costs and reduce
   administrative waste.

No one in Minnesota should go without health care, and no one should have to choose between food and medicine. We can pay less than we are paying now, and provide every citizen with comprehensive health care and every employer in the state with a big competitive advantage. We need to enact the Minnesota Health Plan, and we need to do it now, not “later.”

Taxes: We need a major restructuring of our revenue system. Homeowners, especially seniors, are being taxed out of their homes, and low and middle-income wage earners are paying more than their fair share. It’s time to provide homestead property tax reduction and to ask the wealthiest 2% of earners to pay the same percentage of income as the rest of us.

Energy: We are rapidly coming to the end of the era of cheap petroleum and natural gas upon which our economy and our individual well-being depends. It’s time that we start to plan for and invest in a sustainable future. As Co-chair of the Legislative Energy Commission I have led the effort to assess our current and future energy needs and to make sure that Minnesota’s energy future is secure. We can’t change overnight, but there is enormous opportunity if we are willing to invest in the research and technology that we need to develop our wind, solar and biomass resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and keep our energy dollars here in Minnesota.

Education is vital to our future.  Minnesota must regain its status as a leader in quality public education and affordable college tuition. We need to assure that every public school in this state receives the same basic funding as every other, and that our schools get the support they need to provide a first-rate education to every student. We must have accountability without lock-step conformity, and we must respect and reward our teachers so that the best and brightest are attracted to, and remain in, the profession. We do not need alternative licensure—we need to support the teachers and the systems we have.

Let’s get real: The global recession may be over according to some economists, but it’s by no means over for the thousands of unemployed and underemployed workers in our state, or for the people who have lost, or are on the verge of losing, their homes or their pensions. Right now our state is faced with rising costs, declining revenues and, of course, a constitutional mandate to balance the budget. We have to do everything we can to get people back to work, and into living-wage jobs. If tax cuts for the wealthy really did create jobs, we’d be rolling in them right now. We need real jobs—now. That has to be our first priority.
We can do it by envisioning and supporting a re-vitalized economy based on sustainable regional development. We can work  to achieve energy security and independence, to rebuild our manufacturing base and to put people to work in jobs that those ”job creators” can’t export to China or India.
Government is all of us, working together. We have to help people to find work, to re-train, to start new businesses, and to sustain themselves and their families. Private investors invest for profit, and that’s fine—government should invest in the well-being of its citizens and support the businesses that employ them. Let’s get to work and get people working.