1. Tester is independent of the large oil companies. He wants to end oil company subsidies and make them pay their fair share of taxes. The bill he co-sponsored -- the Close Big Oil Loopholes Act -- failed when a small group of Democrats voted with the Republicans to support the big oil companies.
2. Tester has consistently worked to repeal the Patriot Act. This unconstitutional law (it clearly violates the First and Fourth Amendments) was enacted in a panic following 9/11. Since then only a few law-makers have had the courage to speak against it. Jon has repeatedly voted to oppose this law and was one of only eight senators to vote against bringing the reauthorization bill to the floor on May 23. Max Baucus was another of the eight.
3. Tester is on the side of women and families. He voted to advance gender pay equity by voting for the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (S181 2009) and has consistently defended Planned Parenthood against attacks from misogynists like Denny Rehberg.
4. Tester is pro-worker. He vigorously backed and voted for the Fair Minimum Wage Act 0f 2007, an act which boosted the federal minumum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour. This wage increase ended the largest income gap in our country's history. Rehberg, of course, voted against it.
5. Tester has stood up to Wall Street. He bucked his party in 2008 and became the only Senate Democrat to vote against the Wall Street bailout. He then voted twice to end the Wall Street bailout early and use all unused funds to lower the national debt.
As a member of the Banking Committee, Jon helped write new rules to protect credit card holders. These include banning unfair interest rates, giving cardholders an extra week to pay their bills, and banning card companies from exploiting young Americans, like college students.
6. Tester has worked for jobs in Montana. From his seat on the Appropriations Committee, Jon has successfully fought to create jobs in Montana communities by investing in physical infrastructure, public safety, and research and development projects such as Billings' Bench Boulevard and Kalispell bypass, the Custer Avenue interchange in Helena, and Black Eagle Road in Great Falls.
Over the past two years, Jon has sponsored Small Business Opportunity workshops across the state. More than 1,500 Montana companies and individuals participated in them, leading to significant hiring that wouldn't otherwise have occurred.
7. Tester fights for veterans. His landmark Rural Veterans Health Care Improvement Act was signed into law in 2010.
The law strengthens care for Montana's veterans by (1) making the mileage reimbursement boost for disabled veterans permanent, (2) opening up grants to transport veterans from their homes to VA facilities, (3) helping the VA recruit and retain high quality providers in rural areas, and (4) expanding telehealth projects.
Jon also fought for and got new Vet Centers for Great Falls, Missoula, and Kalispell. He won new VA clinics in Lewistown, Havre, and Cut Bank and the expansion of VA's Billings Outpatient Clinic.
8. Tester supports ethics reform and transparency. After helping pass the most sweeping reforms since Watergate, Jon went beyond those rules and banned all gifts, meals, and travel from lobbyists for himself and his staff. He then closed the revolving door, barring any staff who become lobbyists from ever lobbying him or being rehired.
He made history the day he took office by becoming the first member of Congress to post his daily public schedule on his website.
9. Tester fights for Native Americans. Jon strongly supported and helped pass the permanent reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which had expired in 2000. The law modernizes delivery of health services in Indian Country and improves access to quality care for all American Indian communities.
Jon was also instrumental in getting the historic Cobell v. Salazar class-action lawsuit settlement passed into law. The measure settles a decades-old lawsuit over mismanagement of Indian Trust lands.
10. Tester protects Montana's outdoor heritage. When Montana loggers, conservationists, hunters, anglers, and motorized users came together to make a plan that could work for Montana's forests, he took their ideas and ran with them. The result was the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act -- landmark legislation to create jobs and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire by requiring at least 100,000 acres of timber harvest in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai National Forests over ten years.
The Forest Jobs bill would also create six areas dedicated to outdoor recreation, safeguard some of Montana's best hunting and fishing areas, and improve the health of the forests through stewardship contracting.
11. Tester helped cut taxes for working families. The most significant tax cuts in decades for middle-class Americans came as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Jon helped write and pass.
One-third of the Recovery Act was tax cuts, and it's estimated that Montanans will see more than $575 million in tax relief through the law, which included (1) the Making Work Pay tax credit, (2) the first time homebuyer tax credit (offering up to an $8,000 credit or up to 10% of the purchase price of the residence to new homebuyers), (3) the child tax credit, (4) the earned income tax credit, and (5) Social Security and Veterans tax credits.
1. Rehberg is an embarrassment to Montana. Numerous alcohol-related public incidents, such as being so drunk he fell off a horse while on a state visit to Kazakhstan and calling the native people there "cone heads" while making Bill Murray-like alien noises, have been widely reported.
Equally embarrassing, because it attracted national attention, is his recent claim to constituents at a town hall meeting that he can feel their pain because he's "cash poor" and "struggling." With a net worth of around $31 million, Rehberg is one of the richest congress members in Washington.
2. Rehberg wants to cut Medicare and Social Security. On July 18, he voted for the Cap, Cut, and Balance Act, a Republican measure which, according to virtually all independent analysts, would result in a huge raid on the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare.
Rehberg got permission from John Boehner to vote against the recent Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare because he knew it would hurt him in his effort to become a senator. But his vote for the Cap, Cut, and Balance Act was in favor of even deeper cuts to social programs than the Ryan plan would've made.
Then, on July 29, he voted for the Boehner Plan that would've cut Social Security and Medicare before allowing the debt ceiling to be increased. It was killed in the Senate.
3. Rehberg is in the pocket of the large oil and coal companies. Not only has he consistently voted to protect their subsidies and tax breaks (e.g., HR 910), but he has voted against off-shore drilling regulations to prevent catastophic spills (HR 3534). Anything to protect and bolster the through-the-roof profits of an industry that has given him around $300,000 during his career.
His vote against the Mine Safety Act (HR 6495) demonstrates his indifference to the safety of miners and his zeal to protect coal company profits.
4. Rehberg does not stand up for veterans. In voting for the Ryan Plan, which would've cut the Veterans Administration by approximately 25%, he has demonstrated that his commitment to helping veterans is just a lot of hollow rhetoric, something he puts on for TV cameras.
5. Rehberg is anti-woman. He voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2009 S 181) and a number of other acts prohibiting workplace discrimination against women. Among these were HR 12 (the 2009 Paycheck Fairness Act) and HR 1338 (the 2007 Paycheck Fairness Act).
Recently Rehberg has led the fight to defund Planned Parenthood, the agency through which many women receive general medical services, including breast cancer screening and birth control. And, of course, Planned Parenthood offers limited access to abortions, which is anathema to Rehberg.
Most shockingly, Rehberg voted for HR 3, an act that would've redefined rape in such a way that the government would be unable to help women pay for abortions after being impregnated by their rapists if (1) they were drugged or verbally threatened before being raped, (2) they are minors, (3) if they said no but didn't fight off their rapists physically for fear of being murdered. Apparently Rehberg thinks there's nothing wrong with raping a woman if you drug her first.
6. Rehberg is against low-income workers. He has consistently voted against raising the minimum wage while voting five times to increase his own salary. He is so indifferent to the plight of low-wage workers that, when asked recently what the minimum wage is, he didn't know.
Rehberg routinely votes against extending unemployment benefits (HR 2010, HR 4213, HR 5618, HR 5749, HR 6419). He and his wealthy friends have never had to draw unemployment themselves, so they don't see why other people need it.
7. Rehberg is 100% on the side of rich people like himself. It goes without saying that he voted for the budget deal that extended tax breaks to multi-millionaires. He and other Republicans demanded this protection of the rich in exchange for allowing an extension of unemployment benefits.
Rehberg's vote against the Emergency Mortgage Relief bill (HR 836) highlights his lack of interest in financially distressed people who are losing their homes.
8. Rehberg is opposed to ethics and political campaign reform. For him (benefiting from millions of dollars in secret donations), the murkier politics are the better they are. That's why he voted against campaign finance disclosure (HR 5175), campaign reform (HR 2356), and against funding the Office of Congressional Ethics (HR 1031).
Just this May he voted for an amendment to conceal political spending by government contractors (Roll Call vote #347). It's important to Rehberg and other Republicans that we not find out about which candidates these corporations are supporting.
As a reward for his support for unlimited secret corporate donations to politicians like him, Citizens United endorsed Rehberg on Sept. 21 (see the photo at the bottom of the page).
9. Rehberg is opposed to stronger regulation of financial firms. He is among those who fought successfully against the naming of Elizabeth Warren, a woman who isn't in the pocket of Wall Street, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And, of course, he voted with the rest of the Republicans against any regulations on the bankers and speculators who wrecked our economy in G. W. Bush's second term (HR 4173).
10. Rehberg is against FDA regulations on big tobacco. In June he offered an amendment to curtail the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate the contents of tobacco products. So far he has taken only $6,000 from the tobacco industry, but he can be sure there's a lot more where that came from.
11. Rehberg thinks low-income college students who take Pell Grants are a bunch of bums. Here's what he said in a radio interview in March:
"So you can go to college on Pell Grants -- maybe I should not be telling anyone this because it's turning out to be the welfare of the 21st century. You can go to school, collect your Pell Grants, get food stamps, low-income energy assistance, Section 8 housing, and all of a sudden we find ourselves subsidizing people that don't have to graduate from college. And there ought to be some kind of commitment and endgame."
Born to wealth, Rehberg never had to worry about paying for college or anything else. His claim that the goal of Pell Grant recipients is a life on public assistance is but one example of his utter contempt for people who aren't wealthy.
12. Rehberg is against senior citizens. Despite all his talk about how much he reveres senior citizens, he voted against the 2010 Elder Justice Act, which would have combated elder abuse.
He also voted to cut funds for Senior Services Corps., an organization that runs the foster grandparent, senior companion, and RSVP volunteer programs. By defunding these programs, Rehberg is working to make the lives of seniors less meaningful and useful.
13. Rehberg is a shameless hypocrite. He recently introduced legislation to "reduce the taxpayer's burden to pay for attorneys' fees of environmental obstructionist groups who abuse the legal system to block economic development and destroy jobs."
"If he is truly worried about the taxpayers," writes Montana Cowgirl, "he must surely have intended to include in his bill Montana's most famous frivolous lawsuit of our time -- one Congressman Rehberg filed against Billings firefighters who risked their lives to save his scrub last year."
