Tester says will take work to fix president’s budget

Tester says will take work to fix president’s budget



(Created: Thursday, February 7, 2008 11:49 AM MST)


Tim Leeds Havre Daily News tleeds@havredailynews.com


U. S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. Said Wednesday that Congress will have a lot of work adding needed items to the budget proposal presented by President Bush this week. “It’s out of touch with Montana values, I can tell you that,” he said. Tester said the president has ignored issues like rural health care, Veterans Administration programs and water projects in his budget while adding to the national debt.

Bush failed in his responsibility to prioritize many important issues, Tester added. “Hopefully in the Senate we can get those back into the budget,” he said. One of the specific issues Tester said was left out of the president’s budget was funding water projects in Montana. One of those projects is repairing the St. Mary’s Diversion which supplies most of the water to the Milk River each year, authorized by Congress last year at $153 million, and another is the Rocky Boy’s/North Central Montana Regional Water System, which requested $20 million to $30 million last year and received just more than $5 million. Tester said he and senior Montana Sen. Max Baucus have fought to include money for Montana water projects in the last budget and will continue to do so, but “it will be an uphill fight.” “… We will continue to because it’s very important,” Tester said. “It’s the kind of long-term economic stimulus we need to be working on. There’s not one penny in the president’s budget for any of those projects and we are going to fight for those projects.”
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