Commentary: As Layoffs Continue, Montana’s Congressional Delegation Couldn’t Appear to Care Less
By Darrell Ehrlick for the Daily Montanan
When miners lost their jobs at Sibanye-Stillwater last summer, it prompted howling from our congressional delegation, and rightfully so. As many as 700 miners were going to lose their jobs, dealing a blow to the Montana economy.
Both Montana senators at the time, Jon Tester and Steve Daines, rushed their own legislation through Congress that attempted to give the multinational mining corporation a better deal in hopes of salvaging just some of the jobs.
Within 24 hours of the announcement of the cutbacks at the mine, due largely to Russians dumping rare-earth metals on the world market, Daines levied blame on the Biden-Harris administration.
Now, compare that with the absolute silence that is coming from our representatives who have said virtually nothing about the hundreds of Montanans who have lost jobs with the federal government, including folks at the Bureau of Reclamation, the United States Forest Service and the Bonneville Power Administration.
Hundreds of people — neighbors, friends and family — who no longer have jobs because an unelected, unconfirmed billionaire put them on a list. Can you imagine if former President Joe Biden had done such a thing — the outrage that would have emanated from Fox News, OAN and other conservative pundits would have generated enough heat to melt our televisions.
As all these cuts continue, with new targets being set on the Department of Education, the Pentagon and the Internal Revenue Service, Republicans continue to dodge media and questions because Congress is also considering making Trump-era tax cuts to the wealthy permanent, something that Daines has committed to; and Congress also wants to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
To say the American public, which supported Trump and his band of sycophants, has been duped would merely suggest we’ve been tricked, when our government continues to be hollowed, and we’re still being robbed. And the very ones who should be protecting us, Congress, by checking the power of the executive, continues to insist this was all part of a mandate.
Forgive me if I missed the rallies that called for people to lose their jobs. And, I must have stepped away from the news when I heard the demands for groceries, gas and imported goods to skyrocket thanks to tariffs and petty trade wars.
We’re beginning to hear the names and see the faces of those who have been terminated, as reported by Lilly Keller of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. We’ve heard about the callous way the former federal employees were dismissed, some by email.
Many who were on probation said that they received letters that insulted their job performance. One employee was told she had not demonstrated her job was in the public interest. Yet another employee was told in a buy-out offer that it was an opportunity to find meaningful work, despite the fact she had given her career to researching energy efficiency for the government in hopes of helping transition to more efficient, cleaner energy sources — a noble goal that both political parties have seemed to embrace.
Other employees in Montana were just told “performance reasons,” but had nothing cited and had received only excellent employee reviews. Some people’s names were misspelled on documents, but that didn’t make the sting of losing a job any less real.
Whether employed by a Columbus mining company or the federal government in Bozeman, the money from those paychecks still spends the same in stores, regardless of the employer. And when jobs are lost, it’s not Democratic grocery stores or Republican car dealers that hurt. It’s all of us.
Our congressional delegation — all GOP, since last fall’s election — seems downright verklempt when it comes to criticism of Trump, even though the result for those workers will be the same — families in distress, struggling and left to rebuild lives.
How does any of this make make us great? It doesn’t make us smarter. It leaves us more vulnerable. It’s imprecise and there’s been no articulation about how, exactly, these cuts help, or what support we’re going to give to those now looking for jobs.
Instead, from the outpouring on social media and the stories that are being recounted of the mass terminations, I see a lot of pain, economic uncertainty, and confusion.
These are the moments that make it most necessary for leaders to communicate the reasons and provide the plan that will lead us to a better outcome. Remember that when Sibanye-Stillwater announced that it would have to lay off miners, the governor and our congressional delegation rushed to push through programs that helped support miners and provide job placement.
But why haven’t Senators Steve Daines or Tim Sheehy said more? They’ll fight to give jobs to the very questionable picks of President Donald Trump, but they don’t seem to show even a fraction of that energy fighting for Montanans who are losing their jobs at the hands of the government they help lead.
We heard a lot of concerns in the run-up to the 2024 election, including property taxes, affordability of basic items, good jobs, threats to democracy vis-a-vis misinformation, and making public schools stronger. Nowhere did we hear that Montana supported people losing their jobs, or the IRS grabbing our personal data — especially in a state that so righteously guards its privacy.
If our own congressional delegation can’t even stand up to this kind of indiscriminate government-inflicted pain, maybe they should be the next ones to get a pink slip.