Change from Without

By Bob Decker
December 3, 2008

Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Laurence Summers, Tom Daschle... agents of change for Barack Obama. People shouldn’t be surprised. Obama ran as a centrist, perhaps banking on the thought that the change sought by so many just meant Anybody But Bush. By that standard, even John McCain offered change, at least 10 percent of the time.

Change in Montana? Well, yes, but not for progressives. Maybe a step forward in the Tier B statewide races, with some promise in Attorney General Steve Bullock and State Superintendent Denise Juneau, but a resolute stride backward with the replacement of a Democratic by a Republican majority in the Senate. In the House, a 50-50 partisan split and a Democratic leadership (by virtue of a Democrat holding the governor's seat) defining itself in terms of consensus and not agenda, forebode that positive change, if any, will be measured hard-fought inch by hard-fought inch.

And what about change from the holdover governor? The best indicator is Schweitzer’s proposed budget for the 2010-2011 biennium announced on November 15 and to be the subject of legislative scrutiny come January 5.

Follow the money to find the philosophy…

• A $250 million general fund surplus to be used, if necessary, when Montana’s economy feels the brunt of the current storm;
• $25 million for energy conservation retrofits of state and university buildings; Oh, ambivalence: unfortunate that Schweitzer is a cheerleader for fossil fuel development, fortunate that he strives to significantly reduce government energy consumption;
• An decrease of 2.5 percent in overall state spending; this includes a drop from the previous biennium in one-time-only spending, but a 10 percent increase in ongoing general fund expenditures (watch this subject of ongoing general fund spending as a predominant partisan battle – let’s call those PPBs - of the session);
• $20 million per year for expansion of the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP), to expand coverage of uninsured children;
• $44 million per year for K-12 education, reflecting a 3 percent annual increase.

The last two items on the list reveal much about the nature of progressive political change. The CHIP expansion, for example, is a statement about a government’s capacity for moral action. Terrific that it’s in the governor’s budget, but remember who is responsible for putting it there.

The CHIP expansion can be credited to the thinking of State Auditor John Morrison and, most importantly, the commitment and toil of the Montanans who guided the idea through the state ballot initiative process. Give thanks to the real agents of change on this subject.

As for a three percent annual increase in K-12 spending, it’s not that much, but I wonder what it would be without the dogged work of the Montana Quality Education Council, a coalition of school districts, education groups, unions, and parents, to insist that the state to live up to its constitutional obligation to fund a “free, quality” system of public schools.

“I put a dollar in one of those change machines,” George Carlin said. “Nothing changed.” He was looking in the wrong place.