Medicaid expansion means spending money we don't have

If we had the money there are lots of things each of us would love to do. I, for example, would like to go to Hawaii this year, put an addition on my house, and I even wish I could pay for my two nephews to go to college.

Those would all be good things to do in and of themselves but unfortunately they are things I can’t currently afford. If I were to choose to do those things in spite of that, especially if I made those choices regularly it would compromise my ability to do other even more important things like put food on the table for my family, pay my current mortgage and even someday help put my own kids through college.

Similarly, I think expanding Medicaid in Montana in and of itself would be a good thing but in the bigger picture is a mistake for the simple reason that we as a nation can’t afford it.

 We as a nation are currently $18.1 trillion in debt and rising! Our federal government has made far more promises and commitments than it can afford to keep and many of them are arguably outside of what the federal government has a constitutional mandate or permission to provide.

We as a nation desperately need to be looking for ways to cut back on spending in general and entitlement spending in particular. To be expanding entitlement spending while this deeply in debt and deficit is pure folly and endangers not just our future ability to keep providing for those in need among us but endangers our ability to remain a strong, leading, and viable nation in the future.

I applaud our state Legislature for having the courage to not take part in the federal government’s latest leap towards national self-destruction, even if it means that we as a state don’t get our fair share of the money the federal government doesn’t have to spend in the first place. Someone somewhere has to start doing the right thing.

I would applaud even louder if the Legislature would help the federal government not only live within a budget, by pushing for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but also by finding creative ways to help the feds live within their broader constitutional restraints, which, like a budget, all three branches of the federal government seem to have an increasingly difficult time living within. —Matt Bailey, Whitefish, board member, North Valley Hospital