You gotta love Dave Skinner’s use of the English language. His latest Flathead Beacon column is headlined, “Contemplating the AfterMax.”
Here’s the intro to the piece:
With Max Baucus announcing his retirement from the United States Senate, it’ll be nice to see the end of all those lame press releases bragging how Max was “fighting for Montana,” to “boost the economy” with “good-paying jobs” funded by his seniority-based position atop the “powerful Senate Finance Committee.”
While Max certainly could score infrastructure pork, the “clout” he inherited over four decades meant little in terms of policy. For example, his Canadian lumber import tariff didn’t save many “good paying jobs” in Montana’s forestry sector. Obamacare? “Train wreck.”
Ah, what the heck – at least there’s a Max Sieben Baucus Federal Building in Helena for a legacy in the “Aftermax.”
Meanwhile, as analysts on both sides expect former Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) to jump into the race, the Montana GOP and conservatives will seek to remind voters of Schweitzer’s support for Canada-style health care.
Montana Media Trackers compiled the “Top 9 Schweitzer Quotes on Government Run Health Care.”
Former Democratic Governor and potential 2014 candidate for U.S. Senate, Brian Schweitzer, has developed a complicated relationship with Pres. Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.
The former governor has never said that he opposes the law outright. However, he has roundly criticized aspects of the law while consistently stating that he prefers a Canadian-style single-payer healthcare system. In September of 2011, he announced that Montana was applying for a waiver from the law to set up its own healthcare system, but was told by the federal Department of Health and Human Services that waivers would not be available until 2017.
Read the full list of quotes by clicking here.