Jon Tester for U.S. Senate

Miles City Star

08/21/2006

By JOHN HALBERT

U.S. Senate candidate Jon Tester explained his energy program and other campaign positions during a visit to Miles City Monday, his 50th birthday, as well as holding a listening session in Riverside Park.

Tester said he favors innovative energy technology, such as biofuels and converting coal to other forms of energy, to help this nation reduce its dependence on foreign energy sources.
He also said he favors troop redeployment out of Iraq “sooner rather than later,” and will work to discourage the export of American manufacturing jobs overseas and the export of American capital to offshore tax shelters.

Tester added that he is willing to work with Republicans on a bipartisan basis to solve the complex problems bedeviling the American health care system.

“It’s as big an issue as energy right now,” Tester said of health care. “As long as the job gets done, I don’t care who gets the credit.”

During the listening session, which drew nearly 100 people, several questions pertained to the veterans’ issues and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Tester used those topics to expand on his views on the Middle East and the War on Terror.

“The boys — and girls — in the military are doing a heck of a good job,” he said. “We need to support them there, and when they get home. That being said, our political leadership has failed us.”

He added that the United States needs to stay engaged in the region as long as the nation is dependent on foreign oil, and noted that our energy dependence has gone up, not down, in recent years.

Tester criticized political appointments to posts that require professional experience and lack of bidding on federal contracts in both the War in Iraq and in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.

“The folks running the show at FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) weren’t the best,” he said.

In response to a woman who said “veterans have really gotten crap from the VA (Veterans Affairs Department) as far as their care,” Tester noted that advances in medical technology are bringing home men and women who would have died on the battlefield in Vietnam.

“We have to make sure the support doesn’t stop when they get back here,” Tester said. Later in the program, he recalled speaking at the University of Montana this winter, and talking to a veteran who had had his legs shot up overseas, but was having difficulty getting his benefits.

“That makes the enamel on my teeth chip,” he said. “When they signed up, we made them a promise. We have to keep it.

“I’m all about the War on Terror. Let’s put money in military intelligence; let’s put money in special forces, and let’s go after those bastards.”

In an earlier interview, Tester had advocated “redeploying” the troops in Iraq “sooner rather than later,” and handing security issues over to the Iraqi military.

“From a financial and a human standpoint, we can’t keep an open-ended commitment there,” he said.

Asked about coal-bed methane development at the listening session, Tester noted that the natural gas it extracts is a clean-burning fuel. The two environomental issues it faces are depletion of groundwater to the detriment of other uses, and groundwater that is brought to the surface degrading water and threatening surface water quality, irrigation operations, and soils.

“If you deal with those two issues, and do it right, there’s no problem,” he said.

“Is that feasible?” his questioner asked.

“Absolutely. The oil and gas industry does it all the time,” Tester replied.

Asked about the Bush Administration’s renewed effort to advance a privatization plan for Social Security, Tester noted that there are challenges to the Social Security system.

“It would be entirely solvable if we hadn’t been robbing money out of it (Social Security reserves) for the last 50 years. We need to put it back,” Tester said, the only comment that drew spontaneous applause.