Every year, families across Montana sit around kitchen tables making hard choices. When costs rise, they don’t pretend the problem doesn’t exist. They don’t max out another credit card and hope things work out. They adjust their budgets, cut back, and prioritize.
Government should be no different.
Yet when Montanans ask simple questions—why property taxes keep climbing or why so much of their paycheck disappears—they’re often met with complicated explanations. The truth is simpler: high taxes exist because spending is high. Taxes don’t cause government growth; government growth causes higher taxes.
Money doesn’t come from nowhere. Every dollar spent by the state of Montana—its counties, cities, and school districts—comes from one of three places: taxes paid today, federal payments and grants ($7.33 billion or 44% of the state’s 2027 biennium budget) or state trust funds. This reality raises a question moderate and progressive legislators rarely answer when promising tax relief: What spending will be reduced to make that relief real?
Without spending restraint, tax cuts are little more than empty promises that shift the burden elsewhere.
Property taxes illustrate the problem clearly. They are unavoidable and arrive whether a family’s income rises or falls. The bill comes due because local governments—cities, counties, and school districts—face budgets that grow year after year. As spending increases, taxes follow. Caps and revenue reshuffling may delay the impact, but if spending keeps rising, homeowners, renters, workers and retirees always pay in the end.
The same is true for income taxes. Government programs don’t fund themselves, and agencies don’t shrink on their own. Every new initiative, expansion, or regulation carries a cost that eventually shows up in paychecks or at the checkout counter.
This isn’t about being anti-government. It’s about realism. When moderate and progressive legislators cut taxes without controlling spending, surpluses disappear, federal dependency grows, and taxes soon return, often higher than before.
Real, lasting tax relief requires discipline. It means evaluating programs, setting priorities, and measuring results. Every family understands the difference between needs and wants. Government must relearn this lesson.
Lowering property and income taxes isn’t a slogan; it’s a commitment to living within our means. When spending is controlled, taxes can fall and stay down. Conservative legislators throughout Montana are committed to smaller government by reducing spending so we can all enjoy a lower tax burden and more freedom.
Tom Millett is a Republican state representative from Marion.