It would be disingenuous of me to say I was born a free-market capitalist. I actually didn’t advocate for, nor understand that ideology until I was nearly five. Let me describe my epiphany.

In my early years I lived with my parents and two brothers on the family ranch 30 miles north of Forsyth. One summer day, Mom cleaned us up and hauled us to town for the Rosebud County Rodeo. Being more accustomed to the open sagebrush plains of eastern Montana than the big city, it was a bit of a shock sitting in the bleachers surrounded by so many people. During the slack time between rough-stock events my wandering eyes spotted a kid about my age scrambling under the bleachers snatching empty beer bottles. Puzzled, I watched for awhile before squirming between the seats and floor boards and dropping to the ground to ask the scavenger what he was doing. “The guy at the beer stand gives me a dime for every case of empty bottles I haul back to him,” the kid explained.

I quietly followed as he lugged a clattering case of bottles from under the bleachers and sure enough, the fellow at the beer stand tossed him a dime. “Whoa Nellie,” I thought to myself. “I need in on this action.” I grabbed an empty wooden case from the stack and hustled under the bleachers. Within minutes, I had filled my case and sprinted to the beer stand. Sure enough, just as with the other kid, the beer guy tossed me a dime and I stuffed it in my pocket. This was great. Before long, I solicited the aid of my two brothers and the three of us were earning money as fast as skinny kids could run with cases of beer bottles. With all of us working the same bleachers, we soon developed real supply chain problems; the rodeo fans simply weren’t emptying the bottles fast enough. In the shadows under the bleachers, we monitored the emptiness of each bottle placed on the floorboards so we could grab them before someone else did. Occasionally, we were a little too quick and a gruff old cowboy would bark and kick at us. Like flies on a road kill, we hovered out of range until he placed his bottle down again and then we would snatch it and run. It is dangerous work being a freckle faced capitalist, but at the end of the day I had a pocket full of dimes—real dimes, because in 1962 dimes contained 0.08 ounces of silver making each one worth $2.80 on today’s market.

If my grand kids crawled under the bleachers for a similar business venture today they would first need to fill out a W-4, an I-9, Workers’ Comp forms, state child support notification form, plus produce a Social Security card all to be told they couldn’t hired because of child labor laws. Hasn’t society progressed? Interestingly, if they were hired they should be paid in nickels as 5 cents of every dime needs to be sent to the state and federal government for taxes. The above story is the perfect sedge-way to today’s point concerning the costly growth of state government. The budget is the hot topic of the second half of the session, so let’s look at the numbers.

For the 2001 biennium, Montana’s total budget was 5.4 billion dollars. By 2011, those two-year budgets had grown to 10.1 billion dollars. This whopping 86.81 percent growth in government spending compares to a Treasure State population growth of only 9.63 percent over the same time frame. This spending increase added 1,811 new state employees with an average annual wage and benefit package above $60,000 each. When compared to Montana’s private sector average wage of $44,000, this is simply not sustainable. We must shrink government.

Our governor, along with other big government advocates, argues Legislative Fiscal Division’s revenue estimates are wrong and Montana has plenty of money to fully fund every program. Their premise is wrong. Spending money just because you have it is exactly how state government has grown to its monstrous size. Our budget should be no bigger than that needed to minimally fund the smallest level of state government as allowed by our constitution. At this moment, Montana’s House is proposing to cut 7 percent from the last biennial budget. This is an unprecedented, but desperately needed, shrinking of government. We will never restore our economic freedom if the fruits of our labors are continually consumed by taxes. No one said freedom would be easy; only worth it.