Toxic Tom Tiffany

You gotta love Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany's ads promoting himself to become Wisconsin's next governor. He's all "Ah shucks" as he stands in a barn with dairy cows in the background and announces that the Democrats claim he’s too cliché. But, he proclaims, he did grow up milking cows and watching his mom quilt, while he’s also been a dam tender, boat captain and a girl dad. “I’m running for governor to cut taxes and red tape, stop Wall Street from buying our homes and big data from bulldozing our farmland,” Tiffany says to close the spot. “Cliche? You betcha.”

While "Toxic Tom" may have milked a few cows in his youth, he sure hasn't been much of a champion for Wisconsin's farmers during his six years in Congress, representing the state's 7th Congressional District. In fact, this friend to farmers has lent more than a helping hand to Donald Trump's policies that have plunged what's left of the state's family farms into a full-fledged financial crisis. Trump's tariffs, which Tiffany gleefully supports, have dried up foreign markets for U.S. farm products. Trump's war of choice, which Tiffany also supports, has caused the price of gas, diesel fuel and worst of all fertilizer to escalate, squeezing the beleaguered farmer even more. What a friend. In fact, no member of the House of Representatives has been more supportive of the craziness that this president has wrought. Like some of his other Wisconsin Republican congressional colleagues, he is a Trump 100 percenter. That may go over fine with the MAGA crowd, but it sure isn't helping the working people, including Wisconsin's vaunted dairy industry.

Today, thousands of Wisconsin's needy — the low-income wage earner, the senior citizen on Social Security, the person dealing with a disability — have been cut off from SNAP (food stamp) benefits. Thousands more have had to cancel their health insurance coverage thanks to politicians like Tffany who ramroded the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill through Congress last year. That budget's cuts to Medicaid are ironically hurting rural America, where Trump is strongest, threatening local hospitals, which rely on Medicaid payments for much of their revenue. But Tiffany has defended the cuts, claiming that it reduces fraud and makes alleged slackers go to work. So much for the single mother in need of affordable healthcare for her children.

Just exactly how in bed this northern Wisconsin politician is with Trump was underscored a few days ago when he refused to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. In fact, when asked to comment on news that the FBI was questioning Wisconsin election workers six years after the election, he backed the apparent probe and said the election workers should face criminal charges if federal authorities deem it necessary.The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently noted, “Wisconsin's 2020 election outcome has been confirmed and vetted by lawsuits, a state audit, a study by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and through a taxpayer-funded investigation launched by Republican lawmakers that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing." Yet Tiffany is so glued to Trump that he refused to acknowledge the election results, even in his own home state where he and five other Wisconsin Republicans won their congressional races in that same election.

https://captimes.com/opinion/dave-zweifel/opinion-ads-paint-a-folksy-image-but-hes-still-toxic-tom/article_c162cef1-1f32-4123-a6a2-8fe07f1bec1f.html