Taxpayers Come First

 Krayton Kerns
3.28.07

Let’s dribble back to a previous analogy: The state basketball championship. 

Picture the gym awash in sweat and tears. The rattling of the bleachers and the screams of the fans explode through the walls. You are on the team; the visiting team…and there is not a single visiting team fan in the stands.  That, ladies and gentleman is the legislature. 

We are now 65 days through this 90 day gathering of our representative republic.  Because I serve on four committees, Judiciary, Human Services, Agriculture and Rules, I have listened to 487 hours of public testimony in response to 277 proposed bills.  Just like the championship basketball game, we are bombarded by the hometown crowd.  But, there is one group of fans we never hear from---the taxpayers! 

Every hearing in the capitol is packed with government department heads and staff. (And yes, you are paying them to be there.)   The mere mention it might be fiscally responsible to hold level or slightly lower (gasp) a budget increase brings the proverbial wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Government will never do with less, only the taxpayer is expected to make that sacrifice.  The monster must be fed. 

Do you know why the taxpaying fan is silent?  They are busy calving heifers, drilling barley, framing walls, pouring concrete, teaching students, welding pipe, stringing wire and turning wrenches so they can pay taxes to fund the government to regulate how they calve heifers, plant barley, frame walls, pour concrete, teach students, weld pipe, string wire, and turn wrenches.  That is a paradox.   

The media, department heads, and tax-and-spenders are hyping the governor’s request for a bipartisan expansion of the state government and the resurrection of the $7.76 billion dollar budget request in House Bill 2.  “That is how we have always done it,” is the explanation.  “Taxpayers give us their money and we spend it on their behalf.” 

Conservatives think HB2 needs taxpayer scrutiny, so have divided that bill into its 8 components so each can be evaluated.  I am sorry to report that not a single state department is asked to get by with less in the ’07 budget than the ’05 budget.  The infectious entitlement attitude for a larger nanny state radiates everywhere. Government continues to grow. Through good intentions the populace becomes enslaved to dependency.  

In reference to an ever expanding government, Representative Jore, said last week. “Leave me alone.  Leave my children alone. Leave my property alone.  I just want to be free.”  In America and in Montana, why is freedom portrayed as such a radical and foreign concept?