Radio Updates
Each week, Montana Family Foundation President Jeff Laszloffy records a legislative update. These short audio news articles are designed to give you a behind the scenes look at the Montana Legislature. We will also keep you up to date on the status of bills that affect moral and family values.
Transmittal Means A Break
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Time for Planned Parenthood to Go
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Is This Bill Dead or Alive
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The text of this radio broadcast is below:
When you’re dealing with the legislature, the key thing to remember is that it’s all fluid. Meetings can suddenly be scheduled or canceled, bills that were on track suddenly fall off the rails and sometimes you get a second chance. A bill that was thought to be dead suddenly rises like a phoenix from the ashes. That can be good but it can also be bad.
In this this process a bill’s chances of passing decline as time goes on, but nothing is ever truly dead until the final gavel falls on the last day of the session. Our goal first and foremost going into any legislative session is to kill the bad bills. The problem is that killed is a relative term. When a bill is tabled in a committee it’s really not dead, it’s just stalled. To get it moving forward again all that’s required is a simple majority vote. It’s also possible to take a tabled bill from a committee by force–that’s called a blast motion. If a bill is stuck in a committee and a majority of legislators want to vote on it they can simply vote for it to be taken from the committee and moved to the floor of the House or Senate. It’s easier to do that in the Senate because it only requires a simple majority vote. In the House it requires a super majority of 3/5 of the body.
As of today, we’re three days away from the transmittal deadline. That’s when all general bills that begin in one house must be transmitted to the other or they’ll die. It’s also a time when legislators will make blast motion after blast motion in an attempt to rescue stalled bills. Most will fail, but a few might slip through and it’s our job to make sure that none of those that managed to survive are bills that we’ve targeted as bad. For our team it’s like sitting on pins and needles, and it’s that point in the session when we start chewing antacids like they’re candy.
When Wednesday arrives we will breathe a sigh of relief. When the smoke clears all the bad bills that missed transmittal will be dead, or will they? Like I said, in this process nothing is truly dead until the final gavel falls on the last day of the session. Just because a bill technically died doesn’t mean that the language cannot be amended lock, stock and barrel into a bill that’s still alive. Although the chances of that happening definitely decreases as the session wears on, the key thing to remember is that this process runs on votes and anything is possible if enough people are willing to vote yes.
It’s basically a game of high-stakes poker played by chess masters with some elements of monopoly thrown in for good measure. At this stage of the game a bill to legalize assisted suicide is on the table in Senate Judiciary and bills to regulate church-based youth treatment programs and promote the homosexual agenda are tabled on the House side. All the federal title ten money that flows to Planned Parenthood has been stripped from the budget and we’re doing everything in our power to see that none of this is resurrected. With all the uncertainty of the next three days, one thing one is for certain–whether you’re a member the House or the Senate, a Republican or Democrat, a lobbyist or a staff member, everyone is looking forward to the transmittal break. It only lasts for four days but it’s a chance to decompress, reconnect with family and finally get some sleep.
Parental Consent for an Abortion
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8 Bills on Deck
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The text of this radio broadcast is below:
Last week someone asked me how the legislative session was going and I said, to be honest it’s strange. Compared to previous sessions it’s been quiet. There seem to be fewer bills and a lot less contention.
I’ve been attributing that to the fact that the voters gave us a divided government. A House and Senate controlled by conservatives and a governor who’s a liberal. Lobbyists on both sides of the political spectrum have told me that they shelve their legislative agendas on election night because the handwriting was on the wall. Conservatives knew that the governor would veto their bills and liberals knew that their bills would die in committee, so why spend the money? Not a bad thing if you think about it. Fewer bills mean fewer laws and laws usually take away freedom. I was happy until this morning when I check my computer and found that we have eight bills scheduled for next week.
On Monday we begin the week with two important life bills. House Business and Labor begins with a bill to disallow lawsuits for wrongful life. While the concept of wrongful death has been around for centuries, the concept of wrongful life is brand-new. In Montana, it rose out of a case in Livingston where a couple sued several healthcare providers for failing to inform them of a blood test that could’ve told them that their unborn child had cystic fibrosis. They said that if they had known they would’ve had an abortion. This case is sad on so many levels. But, the bill up Monday would not allow people to sue for wrongful life. It’s a good bill and we will be there to support it. An hour later, Senate judiciary will hear a bill to legalize assisted suicide. This is a bad idea and we’ll do our best to see that that bill dies. In the afternoon we’ll testify in favor of two more bills that will set of education savings accounts and specialist scholarships for children with disabilities.
Tuesday we regroup and then Wednesday we hear a bill to allow healthcare sharing ministries. These are allowed under Obama care and they’re legal in every state except Montana. This same bill passed the legislature last session but was vetoed by Gov. Schweitzer when he added it to the list of bills that he called crazy. Hopefully this time it will pass.
On Thursday we hear two bills, one to abolish the death penalty and the other to force church run youth treatment programs to adopt state standards even though they don’t accept public dollars. The death penalty bill is one of those perennial bills that’s been around for at least 15 years that I know of, and its chances of making it out of the House Judiciary Committee are fairly slim. The regulation of church treatment programs is a bad idea that’s unconstitutional on at least three levels and we will do our best to kill it quickly. The final bill is one of my favorites and comes up Friday in House Judiciary. It’s a bill to change the parental notification for a minor seeking an abortion law, that the people just passed by 71%, into a parental consent law where at least one parent needs to give consent before an abortion can be performed on a child. We require this for every other medical procedure, so why is abortion any different? In the last session the notification law was also one of those that Gov. Schweitzer vetoed and thankfully his veto was overwritten by 71% of the people. Once again, we’re hoping Gov. Bullock shows more commonsense.
Radio Affiliates:
- 970 KBUL AM Billings
- 1340 KPRK AM Livingston
- 1450 KMMS AM Bozeman
- 1370 KXTL AM Butte
The broadcast also airs on the following YNOP translators at 1:00 pm:
