Lange told reporters of his plan the day before the Montana House begins debating a half-dozen Republican-written budget bills, starting what figure to be several politically contentious days at the Legislature.
And in another new twist to the increasingly bitter budget fight, House GOP leaders decided Tuesday to create two additional bills, bringing to eight the number of separate spending bills outlining the state’s 2008-09 budget.
The reason for the two new bills, Lange said, is a fear that the title of House Bill 804 wasn’t written tightly enough. GOP leaders feared Senate Democrats would take advantage of that possible loophole to stuff the separate budget bills into a single measure.
The two new bills will be heard in committee on Friday and sent to the House floor for debate on Saturday, GOP leaders said.
Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Democratic legislative leaders have demanded that Republicans scrap the multi-budget bill approach and return to the traditional, single budget bill the state has used for the past 30 years.
The priority for House Republicans, however, is to get their now-eight bills through the narrowly split House and before the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Republicans hold a 50-49 majority in the House. Democrats appear poised to vote as a bloc against the measures, meaning all 50 Republicans and Rep. Rick Jore, the Constitution Party member from Ronan, will have to vote for the bills to advance them to the Senate.
Jore has said he believes it’s unconstitutional for the state to take any federal money for human service and education programs.
Lange said Tuesday he’ll propose deleting the full $2 billion in federal money for health and human services to woo the vote of Jore.
The $2 billion represents two-thirds of the entire budget for the Department of Public Health and Human Services over the next two years. The federal funds make up large percentages of the funding for programs that serve tens of thousands of Montanans, including food stamps, energy assistance, Medicaid, mental health and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Lange also said there will be one amendment to restore $14 million to the human services budget, to attempt to persuade Democrats to support it.
“We’ll give Democrats one shot on that bill,” Lange said.
If the Democrats won’t give Republicans their votes on the human services budget, Lange said he is prepared to make the big cut.
“We’ll knock it down exactly where we need to be to get it where (Jore) wants,” said Lange, R-Billings.
Lange admitted he doesn’t favor cutting the federal money from health and human services. He described his motion as “procedural only” to win Jore’s vote, and said he has asked some senators from both parties to restore the deleted $2 billion.
“It would be devastating to the people of Montana,” said Schweitzer’s budget director, David Ewer. “We’d lose our Medicaid program, and we’d lose our CHIP program.”
Ewer said he’s glad that Social Security payments don’t go through the state of Montana “because I guess those would be in jeopardy as well.” He called on Lange to “stop these ridiculous maneuvers and work from his convictions.”
House Democratic Minority Leader John Parker of Great Falls was unaware of Lange’s planned $2 billion cut.
“I don’t take anything for granted here,” Parker said. “We’ll watch and wait.”
He criticized Republicans for creating two more budget bills, saying he found out about it after it happened.
“With the razor-thin margins in the Legislature, nothing will happen without cooperation,” Parker said. “We’re being dealt new surprises every day.”
House Democrats “are strongly concerned about the fragmented budget bills because they raise a serious risk to future litigation,” Parker said. Democrats have argued that the Montana Constitution forbids general appropriations bills from having statutory changes in them - as the GOP six-pack of bills had.
Jore, meanwhile, was noncommittal about how he will vote, but certain about one thing: “These bills will have to be significantly reduced on an overall basis for me to even consider voting for them.”
He said he won’t vote for the bills unless their combined overall increase is less than 5 percent for the next two years.
As amended by the House Appropriations Committee last week, the six GOP budget bills proposed $360.9 million in general fund spending increases - or 13.8 percent - over the next two years, according to a summary by the Legislative Fiscal Division.
For the all-funds budget, which includes federal funds, the six bills propose a $717.3 million, or 10.4 percent, increase over the next two years.
Republicans plan to break HB804 into three bills, with one covering the legislative budget, one budgeting for the judiciary, and the third spending money on the governor’s office and several departments.
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