Are you listening, Sen. Tester?

Sen. Jon Tester stopped in Kalispell this week to hear the economic concerns of 15 hand-picked business and community leaders.

But is he really listening?

Tester joined with congressional Democrats to narrowly advance the enormously expensive Senate health-care bill riddled with taxes, fees and regulations, and while in Kalispell, he expressed a commitment to passing health-care “reform.”

Even the relatively friendly roundtable participants expressed deep concerns about the economy on many levels, in real estate, construction, the lack of lending, high unemployment and the potential for losing even more of the Flathead’s best jobs in the future.

And many of the participants spoke about the suffocating effects of overreaching regulation and taxation on businesses and individuals. Why invest in expansion and job creation, much less retaining jobs, if Washington, D.C., continues heaping on taxes and regulation?

While those at the roundtable did not directly target the health-care bills developed in the House and Senate, it is painfully obvious that the legislation is a huge, heaping dose of taxes and regulation. Had the gathering been an open forum for the general public, Tester certainly would have heard far more vitriolic opposition.

Americans for Tax Reform has identified more than a dozen types of taxes in the 2,000-page Senate bill with names like “the individual mandate tax,” the “employer mandate tax,” the “tax on medical device manufacturers,” and the “excise tax on comprehensive health insurance plans.”

Tester maintains that the current health-care system is unsustainable. He is probably right, and there was a time when congressional Democrats said their main goals for health-care reform were to control health-care costs, reduce government spending and curb future deficits, particularly in the Medicare program.

But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the “reforms” being advanced in Congress will do none of the above, and it’s all being advanced in the midst of a recession with widespread economic uncertainty. We won’t even get into the many arguments asserting that the legislation will actually lead to a worse American health-care system.

It’s clear, however, that support for the legislation has been falling. In Montana, an MSU poll found that a remarkable 74 percent think that health care will get worse if the “reforms” are passed. Nationwide, Rasmussen Reports this week found that just 38 percent of poll respondents were supportive, down from 47 percent the week before and 45 percent the week before that. Yet, congressional Democrats forge ahead.

Americans who have been dropping their support have to be wondering whether lawmakers like Sen. Tester are listening.