Billings Gazette, Dec. 26, on Congress risking funding for CHIP:
Last week, Congress and President Donald Trump enacted permanent income tax cuts for corporations and other businesses. Then they belatedly gave the Children’s Health Insurance Program an extension that could run out in a matter of weeks.
In fiscal 2017, which ended Sept. 30, the federal government spent $16 billion to provide health coverage at low cost or no cost to the families of 9 million American children. Before leaving Washington, D.C., Thursday for their Christmas vacation, lawmakers approved a stopgap funding bill that includes $2.9 billion for CHIP. Some members of Congress said that will fund the children’s health program till March, but others on both sides of the aisle cautioned that the money will run out sooner.
Congress has known for more than two years that CHIP funding would end on Sept. 30, 2017, if the House and Senate failed to reauthorize it. Republicans and Democrats agree that it should be renewed for five years. However, the parties’ leaders disagree on how to pay for it.
There was no such “pay for” requirement on the massive tax cut bill, which is projected to add at least $1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. In other words, the majority in Congress agreed to borrow $1 trillion to cover the tax cut, but it hasn’t reached a compromise on funding $16 billion this year for children’s care.
In Montana, 24,000 children rely on CHIP. Over the past 20 years, federal CHIP funding has allowed Montana children in low income families to have health coverage, even when their parents couldn’t afford insurance for themselves.
Gov. Steve Bullock joined Republican and Democratic governors from other states in pleading for CHIP renewal. Fourteen states were expected to start cutting children out of their programs in January, if Congress failed to appropriate more money. Montana was projected to run out of CHIP funds as early as February.
Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a joint statement Friday, promising to seek a five-year extension soon.
“We will be vigilant to ensure this program isn’t subject to repeated short-term fixes and constantly looming deadlines - families across the nation deserve better,” Wyden and Hatch said. And yet CHIP has less than two months of funding when we are already three months into the fiscal year.
Among the funding sources proposed for CHIP is elimination of public health programs and higher costs for some Medicare beneficiaries.
A group of eight children’s advocacy organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, March of Dimes and National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, said in a news release: “Right now, the greatest threat to children’s health care coverage is congressional inaction.”
We agree. As the children’s health advocates said, “What states and families need is stability. Instead, what they get from the House measure is a continuation of a dangerous trend: temporary, inadequate CHIP funding patches, delivered at the last possible moment with no comprehensive relief assurance.”
This popular children’s program may be just the first casualty as Congress eventually pays for the massive income tax cut law by reducing spending on Medicaid, Medicare and other domestic programs as outlined in the GOP budget blueprint.
We urge Montana’s delegation of Jon Tester, Steve Daines and Greg Gianforte to advocate for the children of Montana. Don’t allow their health care to be used as a political bargaining chip.
Editorial: http://bit.ly/2BYlAAH
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Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Dec. 26, on tax dollars not funding failed mining
In territorial days - and even many years into statehood - Montana suffered the status of a virtual colony to the wealthier states on the East and West coasts. The state’s natural resources were looted and all the profits were taken away with little regard for who and what was left behind. To find evidence of this, one need look no further than the abandoned mines scattered throughout the state and the public expense of cleaning them up.
A Chronicle report published Dec. 10 told of state Department of Environmental Quality estimates there are some 6,700 abandoned coal and hard rock mines dotting the Montana countryside. These sites pose the gamut of environmental and physical risks, from heavy metals and other pollutants leaking into water sources to open mine adits into which people can fall or become trapped.
The report recounted successes the DEQ has had recently reclaiming a few mining sites despoiled decades ago. But many remain. They are being cleaned up using money provided by the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, which for 40 years has levied fees on mines to raise funds for reclamation. But the act is slated to expire in 2021 and mining interests and their advocates are already lining up against its renewal.
That’s certainly an issue that bears watching. But the larger issue is the long history of failing to hold mining companies sufficiently responsible for cleaning up their messes.
State lawmakers should consider creating a state mine reclamation fund by imposing fees on current mining projects. And, more importantly, they should beef up mine cleanup bonding requirements.
The state has long required mining companies to post cleanup bonds. But in the late 1990s, following the bankruptcy of the Pegasus Mining Co., which saddled state taxpayers with millions of dollars in cleanup costs at the company’s mining sites, Montana lawmakers increased bonding requirements for getting mining permits exponentially. But several audits in ensuing years found the requirements were falling short of what was needed. The requirements were increased, but it’s probable those bonding requirements are still inadequate for covering the cleanup of a major mining failure.
Lawmakers should commission an in-depth audit of our mine bonding requirements to ensure they cover the worst-case scenario. If they don’t, they should be increased to ensure they do. If that means some mining projects are no long financially viable, then they shouldn’t go forward. Taxpayer assets should not be risked on speculative mining ventures.
The past is the past. It’s over and done. But we don’t need to relive the past in the future. The evidence is overwhelming: Public money has been gambled - and lost - far too many times in the past on failed mining projects.
It must never happen again.
Editorial: http://bit.ly/2zDr7a2
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Montana Standard, Dec. 24, on Ron Ueland’s truck body company coming to Anaconda:
Big bucks from bitcoin? Maybe.
A bonanza from slag? Maybe.
Jobs from manufacturing truck bodies? Absolutely.
Anaconda has had its share of tantalizing economic development news in recent months, with Premier Industries’ proposal to build a plant to make proppant and pig iron from slag, and now the Burrell Group’s plans to set up bitcoin mining and training facilities. The principals in these ventures - Rick Tabish happens to be a spokesman for both - have said they will eventually mean some 700 jobs for Anaconda.
Maybe all that will work out just fine. But many doubts about both projects remain - feasibility, scale, financial wherewithal, staying power.
In the meantime, Anaconda quietly scored a rock-solid coup this week with the announcement that a company co-owned by Butte’s Ron Ueland, Intercontinental Truck Body Co., will relocate from Conrad to Anaconda.
Ueland bought the Arbiter Building, a former Anaconda Company building, in 2015 and has been refurbishing it to house the truck-body company.
ITB’s economic prospects are comparatively modest. It will mean a minimum of 15 new jobs in Anaconda starting next year.
We sincerely hope the glamor projects, reprocessing a mountain of slag and mining bitcoin, pay off in a major way for Anaconda, which richly deserves a shower of good fortune.
We wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
But ITB’s more prosaic mission of making truck bodies, as well as fulfilling some defense contracts - backed by the capital, work ethic and business savvy of Ron Ueland?
Anaconda, you can take it to the bank.
Editorial: http://bit.ly/2zE31vT
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