Billings Gazette: Tester talks Bakken, budget, economy
The Bakken oil boom can be a moneymaker for Eastern Montana, but the torrent of business will prove too much for the community if it isn’t ready, said Montana U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, who thinks the federal government should be helping.
“Mother Nature puts the pressures on during a natural disaster. Man is putting the pressure’s on now,” Tester, a Democrat, said while meeting with The Billings Gazette editorial board Friday. “A lot of these local communities can’t afford it. They’re going to have to come up with something, no doubt.”
Small governments and private businesses are asking for federal help. At a Billings roundtable meeting on energy last week, Tester was asked to lean on Silver Airways, the region’s lone small-community commercial flight service, to add direct flights from Billings and Bozeman to Williston, N.D.
As scarce as housing is in the oil patch, businesses such as Sanderson Stewart Engineering are forced to commute and lose hours of work time doing so. Eastern Montana’s small two-lane roads are rumbling endlessly with heavy truck traffic and looking worse for it.
The demand for skilled workers in western North Dakota and Eastern Montana is insatiable.
But requests for help come as federal lawmakers are challenged to cut $1.2 trillion from 10 years of government spending. Tester said he’s working with a coalition of 40 senators on a budget-cutting plan, which they hope will receive the bipartisan support needed to clear the 60-vote requirement to pass later this year. That plan is likely to have elements proposed by the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction commission, which included a grab bag of spending cuts and entitlement and tax reforms.
