Four years before his 2001 election as Montana state auditor, John Morrison and his wife Catherine published a history of nine politicians who helped define the Big Sky State's progressive-populist tradition. Their book, Mavericks: The Lives and Battles of Montana's Political Legends, recounts the careers of larger-than-life figures such as Burton K. Wheeler, who led the fight in the Senate in 1937 against Roosevelt's "court-packing" scheme; Thomas J. Walsh, who broke open the Teapot Dome scandal of the mid-1920s; Mike Mansfield, the longest-serving Senate majority leader and U.S. envoy to Japan; and Lee Metcalf, one of the forefathers of the modern environmental movement.
The nine leaders ran the gamut from Democrats to Republicans to independent-minded populists. Yet what they all had in common was an unwavering commitment to their political and cultural values. It is a character trait that Morrison deeply admires.
"The people of the American West are independent, they believe in personal responsibility," Morrison says. "But they also believe in fairness, that government has a role in creating opportunities. As a public leader, I always try to respond to those values."
Those values are evident in Morrison's health-care reform proposals, now under consideration in the state legislature. The bill's main feature would provide refundable and advanceable tax credits to small businesses and low-income individuals for the purchase of health coverage. "These tax credits go to the heart of personal responsibility," Morrison explains. "Many people who are uninsured today would be willing to pay what they can for it, but there aren't any health insurance products out there that they can afford. If we can create mechanisms that allow individuals and small businesses to plug into the insurance market at a level that they can afford, we not only will cover them but also get them to contribute as much as they are able to the cost of health care in society."
Morrison's proposal also calls for a major expansion of Montana's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to double the number of children now enrolled. The state would pay for the expansion through an increase in its cigarette tax. Every year Montana spends more than $200 million treating cigarette-related diseases and 80 percent of those costs are borne by non-smoking taxpayers, Morrison says. "It all goes to personal responsibility. We are asking those who make the choice to smoke to assume a greater share of the societal cost of their decision."
Morrison also persuaded lawmakers last year to enact his proposal to create one of the nation's strongest laws protecting the privacy of citizens' personal information. He is currently working with Gov. Judy Martz to advance legislation that would create a state venture capital fund aimed at diversifying Montana's economy. And in his role as a member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, he chaired a task force whose recommendations formed the basis for the legislation passed by Congress last year to help insurance companies cover the cost of catastrophic claims in the event of future terrorist attacks.
Too often, Morrison says, Democrats on the national stage have paid insufficient attention to the values of the people of the West. "We have a very strong connection to the land and believe in responsible stewardship and conservation," he says. "But we are not sympathetic to those who want to lock up the land and throw away the key. Here in Montana we have a little over 900,000 people and some 200,000 are licensed hunters. So the majority of our households have firearms and we live with them safely. Good gun policy for New York City is not the same as good policy for Montana. And the people of the West take their religion seriously; it's an important part of their lives. Democrats need to respect and honor people's religious faith, not disparage it."
