A report from U.S. Congressman Matt Rosendale on the first 50 days in office was welcomed last Saturday at the Mineral County Commissioners office.

Hosted by the Mineral County Republican Central Committee, about 24 people were in attendance when he arrived and was introduced by Bobby Carrol, Chairman of the committee.

“The legislation that is going through right now is extremely, extremely damaging to our country,” Rosendale said. “In the House of Representatives, the majority rules anything. In the Senate they still have the filibuster in place that takes 60 votes to get a lot of legislation after the House, but in the house it’s just 50%.”

He went on to say that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has, and is, changing the rules and because the Democrats have the majority of the House, they call the shots.

“Nothing has to go through committees until April the first. So, this $2 trillion stimulus bill? It didn’t go through committee. We couldn’t comment on it. We couldn’t debate it. This Equality Act? Didn’t go through committee. Didn’t get debated. All of this stuff is coming straight to the House floor to vote on it. We can’t stop it. We don’t have the votes. We need a minimal of six Democrats to vote with us, which we don’t have, so they’re going through”, Rosendale shared.

He went onto say that they (Democrat House of Representatives) don’t even have to be there to vote. They sign a form that says they are not there because of COVID and vote by proxy.

He has been placed on the Natural Resources Committee and Veterans Affairs which are both great for the state of Montana.

“Natural Resources basically governs the federal public lands so that’s a place I can at least start forcing discussions about using resources and properly managing the land,” he said which hits home as the federal government manages 80.8% of the 782,080 acres of land in Mineral County.

Commenting on the Veterans Affairs Committee which has five sub-committees, he serves as the highest-ranking Republican in Technology and Modernization. One of the biggest problems, he explained, is that there are two different systems consisting of the records from the Department of Defense and another from the Veterans Affairs and they are trying to get them to communicate.

And they’re not.

“I had enough experience with technology people when I was the State Auditor that I know we don’t have to spend that kind of money and that we can create a system that DOD and Veterans Affairs can speak to each other,” he stated referring to the $3.5 billion invested into the VA side three years ago to fix the problem with another $6.5 billion more that they are ready ‘to throw at this program.’

After a short lunch break where the committee sold tickets to a gun raffle and the upcoming Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, Congressman Rosendale entertained questions from the group.

The integrity of our elections and the direction the country is going was discussed where he admitted his frustration, too.

“We gotta stay engaged. We can’t give up. What we do as Republicans is when we lose, we give up. When we win, we give up and go home and rest again. We have to continue to apply pressure to defend our rights.”

Other discussions consisted of the loss of the Keystone Pipeline and how it slammed Montana. Becoming a Second Amendment Sanctuary County where he felt we have ample state protection right now to protect our gun-rights and to focus energy on other issues.

Warnings of the dangerous interest China has in the United States, green energy and our power-grid problems, term limits which he is absolutely in favor of having for state and federal elected official, and the filibuster in the senate.

“If I would say I’m worried about anything right now, it’s about the filibuster staying in place” as he reminded the room that three years ago when they had control of the senate, they wanted to abolish it.

“Be careful what you ask for because today we need it.

After spending the morning talking with people in the Bitterroot, the afternoon in Mineral County and the evening with residents of Missoula, Congressman Rosendale boarded an early morning flight back to Washington D.C. on Sunday.