Tim Leeds Havre Daily News tleeds@havredailynews.com
U. S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. Said Wednesday that Congress will have a lot of work adding needed items to the budget proposal presented by President Bush this week. “It’s out of touch with Montana values, I can tell you that,” he said. Tester said the president has ignored issues like rural health care, Veterans Administration programs and water projects in his budget while adding to the national debt. Bush failed in his responsibility to prioritize many important issues, Tester added. “Hopefully in the Senate we can get those back into the budget,” he said. One of the specific issues Tester said was left out of the president’s budget was funding water projects in Montana. One of those projects is repairing the St. Mary’s Diversion which supplies most of the water to the Milk River each year, authorized by Congress last year at $153 million, and another is the Rocky Boy’s/North Central Montana Regional Water System, which requested $20 million to $30 million last year and received just more than $5 million. Tester said he and senior Montana Sen. Max Baucus have fought to include money for Montana water projects in the last budget and will continue to do so, but “it will be an uphill fight.” “ We will continue to because it’s very important,” Tester said. “It’s the kind of long-term economic stimulus we need to be working on. There’s not one penny in the president’s budget for any of those projects and we are going to fight for those projects.” Tester said he will continue to work to raise the mileage rate for disabled veterans traveling to Veterans Affairs Administration facilities for medical treatment. In January, the VA announced it was implementing a compromise Tester worked out with Republicans in the Senate VA Committee, increasing the mileage rate from 11 cents a mile to 28.5 cents a mile. Tester originally asked for the same rate provided federal employees, 48.5 cents a mile. Tester said Wednesday that although he has concerns about the economic stimulus package being debated in Congress, including increasing the national debt, the government needs to do something. “All who study economic trends tell me this is real and to do nothing is not an option,” Tester said. He said Wednesday that will not vote for the package unless it contains something for senior citizens and disabled veterans, which were included in a proposal by Baucus. The Associated Press reported last night that Senate Republicans had blocked adding those measures, which are not included in a House version, blocking moving the bill to a final vote by a vote of 58-41, two short of the 60 needed. Tester said some other issues moving forward include continued debate of the 2008 Farm Bill, which includes Baucus being named a member of the conference committee which will resolve differences between the House and Senate versions; and work to develop the use of cleanburning coal. He said that Montana has a vast resource in coal, and he is told that coal will be part of the nation’s energy portfolio for the next 50 years. “As lawmakers we need to address global warming and work with using coal,” Tester said. “We do have incredible resources of coal in the state of Montana and we want to use them and use them in a responsible way.”
