A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
During the 2015 legislative session, a bill to repair and expand infrastructure improvements in Montana passed the senate 47–3, but failed to pass the house because tea party Republicans balked at issuing bonds to finance the projects. The consequences of the bill’s death were recently reported by the Lee State Bureau. Yesterday, the Helena Independent Record published a trenchant editorial on the harm done by that decision:
The opposition to bonding is about as short-sighted as it’s possible to get in today’s fiscal climate.
Interest rates have never been lower. One reason the state is in position to get such favorable bonding rates is because of the very cash reserves that Republicans are criticizing Bullock for wanting to maintain. Those reserves help give the state its excellent credit rating. Fiscal prudence — you could even call it conservatism — dictates maintaining sensible cash reserves.
And every day the state does not take advantage of low interest rates to finance projects that are daily getting more expensive — since inflation is growing even as interest rates stay depressed — the state is in effect losing money.
Talk about “saddling our grandchildren with debt” is frankly hogwash. It’s perfectly inverted political sloganeering. What we’re saddling our children and grandchildren with are unmet obligations that will be far more expensive and all the more necessary when it’s their turn to pay the bills.
Republicans fancy themselves as the party of business, and believe they have business smarts Democrats are genetically incapable of possessing – but there is nothing smart about the ideological opposition to borrowing (bonding) held by so many Republican state representatives. They are so intent on shrinking the size of government that they no longer have the capacity to govern responsibly. Returning them to office next year will ensure that we send our children to crumbling schools and set tourists and residents alike to cursing the proliferation of potholes. That’s not smart governance. It’s civic suicide.