HELENA — The Montana House began a contentious two-day debate Wednesday on the state’s biennial budget, making last session’s bipartisan House budget deal seem a distant memory.
Democrats unsuccessfully brought 39 amendments to the floor on Wednesday in the areas of general government, health and human services, natural resources and transportation, and judicial, law enforcement and justice. They were aiming to add back parts of the governor’s budget cut by Republican-led committees in the past six weeks.
Democratic Rep. Pat Noonan of Ramsay, vice chair on the House Appropriations Committee, said it was clear to him during the budget process that compromise wasn’t an option and he doesn’t believe Democrats will gain more than a couple victories in bringing amendments.
“Compromise doesn’t begin when you are sure that you are right,” he said. “The script is already written, much like most of this session.”
Committee chair Rep. Nancy Ballance of Hamilton said the committees dove deeply into the details of state agencies to develop the approximately $10 billion Republican budget proposal. The current budget is 2.3 percent lower than the governor’s latest budget request, she said.
“Now we have a billion-dollar unprioritized wish list to go through over the next two days, which I believe is a waste of time for us all,” Ballance said.
Democrats plan to offer more than 100 amendments Wednesday and Thursday that add up to nearly $1 billion. But Noonan said it’s not about the money.
“We’re not just here to spend money … it’s to point out, when we make the tough decisions to be fiscally responsible, who got left behind in those decisions,” he said.
Several of Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock’s priorities, including $37 million for a preschool program called Early Edge, have been left out of the GOP budget. Moves to add that back in, as well as an attempt to include his proposal to expand Medicaid to 70,000 low-income Montanans, both failed along party lines.
Reps. Margie MacDonald and Jenny Eck also tried to return to the budget two provisions of the governor’s mental health plan. Republicans voted down the roughly $3 million in amendments that would have funded updates to a group home and 20 more forensic-unit beds to house an increasing population at the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs.
MacDonald of Billings said that while the House has passed numerous provisions to bolster community-based mental health care, some patients can only be treated at the state hospital.
The governor’s office criticized Republicans for bringing a budget the governor says is unacceptable.
In 2013, it took House members a little over an hour to unanimously approve a roughly $9 billion spending plan, thanks to bipartisan negotiation beforehand.
Once the budget is approved by the House, it will go to the Senate for consideration.