Rep. Art Wittich (R-Belgrade) would miss you, too, were he not such a good shot.

The Montana legislature adjourned its 2015 session last week, three days ahead of schedule. The last joyous spectacle out of Helena was the repeated failure of HB 416, an infrastructure bill that enjoyed bipartisan support but needed 67 votes to pass because it involved bonding. House conservatives shut that one down with a quickness, not so much because they hate sewer and road repairs but because they wanted to finally stop something. As Art Wittich put it to the Billings Gazette:

“Frankly, from a conservative standpoint, it may be the only thing we did in this session. We have virtually lost everything that we came here to accomplish, including truly compromised legislation.”

He was right, finally. Conservatives in Helena started the session with immense power, and they squandered it by systematically opposing compromise within their own faction and from without—much as I predicted. They forced moderate Republicans into a working majority with Democrats, inadvertently creating a legislature more productive and liberal than the one they despised in 2013, when they were weaker.

It’s almost as if ideology were not a substitute for governance. You can read that and other crazy theories in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which reaches Combat! blog late today because I spent the morning letting strangers inspect my testicles. We’re still very sick, but it’s not as bad as the first doctor thought. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links and test results.

A member plugs his ears as Rep. Geraldine Custer addresses the Montana State House.

This photo of how the sausage is made comes courtesy of Art Wittich’s Facebook page, in which he complains that his fellow Republican voted to “emasculate” his party’s leadership by supporting Medicaid expansion. That bill finally passed, but not before 49 Republicans voted to adjourn the entire 2015 session of the Montana legislature rather than see it debated on the House floor. Later that night, after moderates in the GOP joined Democrats to pass a bill central to his legislative agenda, Governor Bullock vetoed a modest Republican tax cut. With only a few weeks to go in our 90-day session, comity has disintegrated in Helena. You can read about it in this week’s column in the Missoula Independent, which also contains this wonderful quote by Rep. Randy Pinocci (R-Sun River):

“The majority of my constituents want smaller government. What does the taxpayer want? I hear every excuse, but we spend money on [expletive] that’s ridiculous. I want to go to the Deaf and Blind School and see if they’re struggling.”

I also apologize for erroneously claiming that Senator Steve Daines nourishes himself by lassoing rainbows and drinking their pigment. So it’s a lot of fun. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Rep. Art Wittich (R-Belgrade) reviews a draft plan to burn Midgetville.

Montana is one of about 20 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid coverage in compliance with the Affordable Care Act. During the 2013 legislative session, the bill to accept federal funds for expansion failed by one vote, after Mark Jacobson (D-Great Falls) accidentally voted against it when he thought he was voting for it. This year, the original bill to expand Medicaid never made it out of the House Health and Human Services Committee, which is chaired by bulwark of personal responsibility Art Wittich.

Fortunately, Sen. Ed Buttrey (R-Great Falls) developed a compromise bill intended to mollify conservatives in his caucus by ensuring that no one got Medicaid coverage for free. Under SB 405, recipients of expanded Medicaid will have to pay a token premium totaling 2% of their income annually. This expedient heads off the tea party objection that it’s wrong to give people free health insurance. It also costs $11 million. That’s how much we expect a third-party insurer to charge to process payments for a program the federal government administers gratis. We’ve spent $11 million to make sure nobody gets anything for free.

That’s conservatism for dummies, as I explain in this week’s column in the Missoula Independent. I wrote it Monday afternoon, before Wittich’s committee killed SB 405 and made it the object of a crazy rules battle. At one point, 40 Republicans voted to adjourn the entire 2015 legislative session to keep SB 405 from reaching the floor. But Democrats have held Republicans to the “silver bullet” bargain they made at the beginning of the session, despite Speaker Knudsen’s display of bad faith, and the House will vote on Medicaid expansion this afternoon. Probably, team compromise will win, and Montana will finally get $5 billion and health insurance for 7% of its population. And we’ll only have to pay $11 million to satisfy the vocal minority who understand politics from reading chain emails.

Never forget, though, that the conservative wing of the Montana Republican Party insisted on spending millions of dollars to make sure nobody got anything free. Putting theory ahead of pragmatism like that is the opposite of conservatism. Probably, the Montana legislature will do the right thing in spite of itself today. But the people who had to be cajoled into it with inefficiency should not call themselves conservatives.

Rep. Art Wittich (R-Belgrade) denies having smelt or dealt it.

Back in 2010, after more than a year of cutthroat legislative maneuvering, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. Part of that law was a provision to expand Medicaid coverage to households whose income was within 138% of the poverty level. Funding for this expansion would come entirely from the federal government until 2020, after which states would pick up 10% of the tab. In Montana, Medicaid expansion would insure 70,0000 people and bring $5 billion into the state over the next five years.

Two years ago, a bill to accept this federal money and insurance failed in the state Senate by one miscast vote. The Montana legislature meets every two years, so proponents of Medicaid expansion had time to organize before their next opportunity. Last Friday, dozens of supporters addressed the House Health and Human Services Committee for more than six hours, after which the committee voted “do not pass” on the Healthy Montana Act along party lines.

The bill will now require a 60-vote supermajority to reach the State House floor. Rep. Art Wittich (R–Belgrade) has used his chairmanship to ensure that a proposal from the Governor to comply with federal law—a proposal that enjoyed near-majority support in the last legislative session and has been endorsed by health care providers, bankers and politicians across the state—will not even be debated in the House. He must be very certain he’s right. I wrote about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, which I urge you to read and then forward to him. The representative from Belgrade is active on Twitter at @ArtWittich. Drop him a respectful line and suggest that he reconsider his position. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.