House rejects GOP cuts, endorses budget bill

By MOLLY PRIDDY
Community News Service
UM School of Journalism

HELENA – After only a day’s debate, Montana’s House of Representatives passed a budget today, rejecting every Republican effort to whittle it down.

The House voted 65-34 to give its initial approval to House Bill 2, which would fund state government over the next biennium. The budget totals $8.1 billion in spending, a $474 million increase from the current budget.

Democrats praised the day’s work as a model of bipartisanship, while disappointed Republican leaders predicted the GOP-controlled Senate would have a better chance of making cuts.

House Speaker Bob Bergren, D-Havre, called the budgeting debate, which began on the floor at 9:30 a.m. and ended at 5:45 p.m., an unprecedented success.

“All 100 people in this chamber want what’s best for Montana,” Bergren said. “We just have a little bit different philosophies.”

A handful of Republicans joined all 50 House Democrats in beating back every proposed cut, despite forecasts late last week of another $41 million drop in projected revenues. In all, analyists have predicted revenue shortages of $290 million since just before this session begain.

The biggest sections of the budget - human services, corrections and public education - all received increases. Human services, accounting for $3.2 billion of the budget, saw a 9.4 percent increase from the last biennium. Public education, at $1.6 billion of the budget, will increase by over 3 percent. The prison system would see a 3 percent increase of $11 million.

The only budget area that saw an reduction was higher education, which will decrease by $5 million.

House Minority Leader Scott Sales, R-Bozeman, offered 21 of the 22 unsuccessful amendments to cut what he considered to be a too-fat budget. He also warned that the state can expect plenty of revenue drops in the future.

“Our nation and our state face serious times ahead,” Sales said. “You cannot spend your way into prosperity.”

Sales’ amendments included removing salary increases for attorneys in the Department of Justice, cutting $175,000 from the Montana Board of Crime Control, and cutting $250,000 from the Office of Public Instruction.

He also proposed cutting $1,300 over the next two years from the Board of Public Education budget for the per diem payments for board members.

“This would just prevent them from having a ham sandwich while they’re on the road,” Sales said. “They can pack a lunch.”

When that amendment failed 36-63, Sales expressed his disappointment. “We couldn’t find the resolve as a group of individuals to remove $1,300,” he said.

But House Appropriations Chairman Jon Sesso, D-Butte, said his committee put together a sound budget that prepares the state for lean times ahead.

“Montana is in the black, we’re not in the red,” Sesso said. “We’re not mortgaging our future to anyone.”

House Democrats held steady in opposing any cuts, while a handful of Republicans joined them for a variety of reasons.

Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, said he didn’t support floor amendments out of respect for the Appropriations Committee, and because it can be dangerous to change a large budget bill without first researching repercussions.

Rep. Duane Ankney, R-Colstrip, said he voted to pass HB 2 and send it to the Senate, where Republicans have the votes to make cuts.

“This bill will go to the Senate where all your concerns will be addressed,” Ankney told fellow Republicans. “This is not the place to do that.”

But Rep. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, compared state spending to that of General Motors, the auto maker now seeking a government bailout.

“You can’t continue to spend money you don’t have forever,” McGillvray said. “We’re running ourselves into a hole.”

The most heavily debated section of the budget concerned the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, with issues ranging from children’s health care to state-funded contraception.

McGillvray tried but failed to cut funding for the Healthy Montana Kids Plan, the program approved by voters last fall to provide heath insurance to nearly 30,000 uninsured children from low- and moderate-income families.

The coverage would be paid for through the CHIP and Medicaid programs, in which the federal government matches state funding.

“Certainly, most voters out there that I talked to had no idea what was really happening there,” McGillvray said. “This is not poverty at all. We’ve gone way beyond poverty and those who ran that initiative knew it wasn’t about kids in poverty, it was about socializing medicine.”

The amendment failed 33-65.

Rep. Ken Peterson, R-Helena, said the federal government uses matching dollars in these programs to suck states into the same debt it faces.

“Many of the things that come into the health services I’d class as charity,” Peterson said. “Pure charity.”

But Rep. Sue Dickenson, D-Great Falls, said health-care spending reflected humanity in hard times.

“We’re not talking about charity,” she said. “We’re talking about justice, we’re talking about investments.”

The next step for HB 2 is the Senate Finance and Claims Committee, where it will be considered and amended before going to the Senate floor for debate.