It's back to work tomorrow for Montana legislators. Today's the last day of a four-day mid-session break, a time when most citizen-lawmakers run home, make the rounds and check in with constituents before returning to Helena.
I don't know what kind of an earful your legislators have been getting these past few days. But I hope they've gotten help from some of you in answering what appears to be the billion-dollar question in Helena this winter: Were Montanans only kidding last year when they said they believed the state was on the “right track”?
69 percent of women expressed satisfaction with the state's direction, agreeing Montana was on the “right track.”
Another poll conducted for us at the tail end of a spirited election campaign season found 68 percent of Montanans overall still believing the state to be on the “right track.” That rosy view was expressed by 80 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of political independents and 60 percent of Republicans.
I'm as skeptical about polls as anyone. But those results certainly made an impression on me. The Montana zeitgeist for nearly all the 25 years I've lived here has been slight foreboding and wistful nostalgia in the face of seemingly uncontrollable economic and social change. Most Montanans seem to share an almost incongruous delight in living here while harboring nagging suspicions that they pay a dear price to live in paradise.
So my ears pricked when Montanans started saying things are on the right track.
I'm pretty sure that Republican leaders in the House of Representatives didn't take them seriously, though. At least they haven't been. Otherwise, they wouldn't be working so hard and blatantly to derail efforts by Gov. Brian Schweitzer and his fellow Democrats - on almost all issues but most notably on the state budget.
The GOP has only the slightest majority in the House of Representatives, but is effectively using its control of that chamber to reinvent state budgeting. House Republican leaders surprised even some of their own party stalwarts when they trashed House Bill 2, the comprehensive state budget bill, and replaced it with a half-dozen separate appropriation bills. They spoke tongue-in-cheek about making the budgeting process more transparent - meaning easier to understand and follow - but everyone knows the opposite is true.
The state budget at this point - with the legislative session half over - is a blurred mess that nobody can make sense of. The real reason to fragment the budget has to do with partisan politics, not the budget. It's about creating multiple fulcrums giving Republicans more leverage than their nominal 50-49 working majority otherwise would give them.
I know. Talk about the state budget makes my eyes glaze, too. But we're not just talking about the budget. We're talking about how many criminals will be lurking on your street, how many potholes you drive over, how much tuition you pay, whether your kid spends the afternoon in kindergarten or day care. And we're talking about whether you celebrate getting a check in the mail or sit stewing over the news about big, out-of-state corporations scoring huge new tax breaks.
The governor tells me he's not going to sign six budget bills one at a time. He makes a good case that he can't uphold the constitutional mandate for balancing the budget unless he has the entire budget in front of him.
The budget fight has all the makings of a spectacular train wreck in the weeks to come. The prospects are amazing, considering the fact the state is running a big surplus, which actually makes a lot of decisions easier. We don't actually have to choose between tax cuts and adequate funding for important things, or between saving money for a rainy day and attending to current needs. Budgeting still comes down to making choices, but the choices really have never been easier.
Of course, no one expected Republicans to go to Helena this winter just to cheer Schweitzer & Co. on. You'd have to be the most diehard Democratic partisan to even want that. I think most people understand and appreciate the value of incorporating a range of ideas, values and political points of view into decisionmaking. The two-party system works pretty well (more parties might well work better), and a constructive clash of ideas often can produce good results. Effective political minorities working as the loyal opposition serve an important function in any democracy.
But with so many Montanans agreeing that we're on the right track, I should think the differences would be relatively minor - at least when it comes to the more mundane matters, including budgeting. I know quite a few Montanans - people all over the state - and no two agree on everything. Yet, the Montanans I know aren't nearly as polarized as Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature appear this year.
Conceding reasonable disagreements exist among reasonable people, you'd think the majority of lawmakers representing the majority of Montanans would generally pull in the same direction. If we're on the right track in Montana, the differences should come down to degrees. I think we've seen greater bipartisanship in the Legislature at times when Montanans were less agreeable about the perceived direction of the state. That fuels my suspicion that the conflict in Helena right now is all about the politicians, not the people.
Today's drought of bipartisanship in Helena is a bit odd, because so much of the Republicans' opposition focuses on Gov. Schweitzer, who isn't any Democrat's idea of a political purist. On some issues, Schweitzer actually seems more aligned with the right than the left. But he does have a capital “D” prominently displayed after his name, and his populist progressivism has made him the poster child for the Democrats' resurgence in the West. He's pretty popular among Montanans. A late December poll showed some 65 percent of Montanans rate him favorably. A different poll late last fall gave him a 77 percent approval rating.
Montanans like the way things are going in Montana; they seem to like the job the governor is doing. So, why are Republican leaders so fiercely opposing him instead of, you know, just trying to steer him a bit?
After the last election, I was a little surprised to hear now-House Speaker Scott Sales of Bozeman suggest the reason why Republicans had lost control of state government after nearly two decades of domination was because the GOP wasn't conservative enough.
“There was a frustration within our party that we'd lost our compass a little bit,” he said. A better guess might be that the political pendulum naturally swings back and forth a bit, and the Republicans had pretty much played out their hand after two decades of state control - while Democrats under Schweitzer have become a bit more centrist and gained appeal among swing voters.
I worry that Republicans may be too focused on stopping Schweitzer to notice that the direction he's been heading pleases most Montanans.
Another Republican leader, Michael Lange of Billings, foreshadowed recent events back in November when he told one of our reporters, “My job is to show no quarter to the Democrats as they try to push their liberal agenda.”
So, do you suppose that's what this is about? Something tells me the Republicans still haven't found that compass. I expect Republicans to challenge Democrats on matters of policy. It seems so very cynical, however, to define your duty as opposing whatever the other party favors - period. Politicians who do that aren't representing the people. They're representing their political parties - and perhaps just themselves.
I remember visiting with Schweitzer right after the election in November. He waxed philosophical about the results, telling me he thought there might be some advantage to having a Legislature where neither party dominates - even with one house actually under GOP control. He suggested the divided Legislature could require or at least encourage compromise to accomplish anything. That spirit of cooperation might serve Montana well, he hoped. Forgive him. He's relatively new to politics.
If the budget battle and other differences playing out in the Legislature result in the train wreck I fear, we're all going to be sorry. A political train wreck isn't going to put us on a better track. It could take us off the right track, and maybe make it hard to get back on.
Steve Woodruff is the Missoulian's opinion page editor.
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