15 April 2019 — 0535 mdt
Hold your nose and cross your fingers —
it’s legislative sausage and extortion day in Helena
today’s action
Montana’s best political reporters will be posting near realtime reports at the #mtpol #mtleg hashtags on Twitter.
The floor sessions will be streamed on internet video.
Montana’s political bloggers, as they find time, will be watching the show and posting Tweets.
Today may be the last day this legislative session that offers a reasonable chance of passing HB-658, extended expanded Medicaid as bastardized by the “Solutions Caucus” of so-called “moderate” Republicans.
Several members of that caucus and cosponsors of HB-658, aided and abetted by Scott Sales and Fred Thomas, two of the most reckless legislators in Montana’s history, have been withholding their votes for the Medicaid bill in a brazen attempt to coerce Gov. Bullock into signing SB-331, Sen. Tom Richmond’s robber baron bill to help Northwestern Energy shakedown its ratepayers for the benefit of its stockholders.
If the Medicaid bill fails again in the MT Senate, we’re probably headed for a train wreck with 96,000 casualties and a special session in a last ditch effort to clean up the mess.
This impasse isn’t an exercise in legislative horse trading, or in even in malodorous sausage making. It’s cold blooded extortion, as well as an attempt to humiliate and embarrass Gov. Bullock by forcing him to choose between signing SB-331, thereby blessing truly awful and stupid policy, or vetoing it, thereby outraging labor unions and other interests that mistakenly believe that appeasing Northwestern will keep Colstrip’s old coal-fired power plants operating for decades to come. It’s petty politics at its worst, the kind of politics that exasperates voters and causes them to lose faith in government.
Last night, KXLH’s Mike Dennison posted this Tweet that summarizes the pressures facing legislators today.
Getting ready for deadline day at #mtleg on Monday -- all amended $ bills must pass 2nd reading, or face super-majority transmittal hurdle. Colstrip bill on House floor. Tax bills stalled in committee. Medicaid awaits in Senate. Budget bills lurking. Ah, yes. #mtpol #mtnews
— Mike Dennison (@mikedennison) April 15, 2019