Legislative Report: I am one vote out of 100

By Rick Jore, Representative HD12

Much of last week, including Saturday, was spent debating the State budget. The Appropriations Committee, with a Republican majority, decided to work through the budget process with eight separate bills rather than one. For my part, I don’t mind the budget being broken into several bills. The budget has always been debated in sections, even when it was contained in one bill. The Democrats oppose this effort and decided to vote as a block against all budget bills and amendments, including increases to the budget. I find this odd since most of their criticism on the floor is that too many programs are under-funded.

For example, one proposed amendment offered on the House floor by the Republican Chair of the subcommittee increased the Health and Human Services budget beyond the original huge increase requested by the Governor. Democrats wouldn’t support even that. The amendment failed, with myself and a group of conservative Republicans voting against it also.

With the Democrat strategy of voting as a block, the Republicans need my vote to pass the bills. I am willing to work with them but will not support increases of over 13 percent, which was the amount of budget growth allowed in the Republican bills as passed by the Appropriations committee. (HB 2, the single budget bill that the Democrats want and that has been tabled in committee, contains the Governor’s proposed budget and reflects an increase of over 22 percent for the biennium). The strategy of the Democrats placed me in the deciding role on budget votes.

While I have been successful in encouraging the Republicans to enact reductions in the budget so that I can vote for some of these bills, I have been receiving volumes of correspondence from around the state conveying to me such things as “one person should not have this much power” or “why do you not support education, poor people, old people and children?” (Some of the messages are not printable or credible with many using adjectives that are less than flattering to describe their opinion of me.)

I find this ironic because the fact is, as few as two Democrats voting with the Republicans would entirely negate the impact of my vote. In short, I am one vote out of 100 and it is nothing more than party politics that has placed me in the role of being the deciding vote. Whether in that role or not, I will not deviate from principles that I campaigned on and that those who voted for me expect me to uphold.

Just last week I contacted the Dept. of Commerce and the Dept. of Revenue to get updated numbers to determine how the budget breaks down on a per household basis. Even with the reductions enacted on the floor, the budget we are debating and that many are claiming “does not provide adequate funding for state government services,” amounts to over $11,000 annually per Montana household.

I simply disagree with those who believe we need additional spending and I am more convinced than ever that “net taxpayers” are the most under-represented people in this State.

I encourage people to keep in mind that increased spending means less tax relief for those who are struggling to pay their property taxes so they can keep their homes.

Additionally, I have been criticized heavily for my concern about the percentage of federal dollars that make up our state budget (almost half) and my willingness to reject them. We must reverse this trend. I wonder about our long-term vision and our sense of justice when we continually add to our national debt by taking dollars from the feds (that in reality do not exist and is only possible because of “deficit spending”) because we think we cannot get by without more help from a paternalistic federal government. The House education committee will hear the second of two Senate bills regarding the funding of all-day kindergarten on Wednesday of this week. I will discuss those bills in my next report and offer my thoughts about why I do not support state funding for all-day kindergarten.