In The News

Nearly 120 House members and hundreds of organizations are ramping up pressure on Congress to include mandatory funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and billions of dollars to address the backlog in national parks and public lands maintenance in the next round of coronavirus relief legislation. The push shows efforts to enact the bipartisan package remain high on its supporters’ agenda despite having a planned March vote on a package, S. 3422 (116), led by Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Steve Daines of Montana, derailed by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Given the clear bipartisan support in both

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is set to introduce legislation that would codify and extend President Trump’s executive order to restrict some immigrants from entering the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News has learned. Daines’ bill would temporarily extend the immigration ban until 60 days after the coronavirus national emergency order is lifted, with the goal of giving U.S. workers an advantage to fill necessary jobs before immigration restarts. Trump’s executive order is currently slated to expire in mid-June — although Trump has previously hinted the ban could potentially go for a “lot longer” than that. Fox News is told that other lawmakers are

More than 20,000 small businesses across Montana have received funding from the Paycheck Protection Program passed by Congress in March, Sen. Steve Daines said Monday. The funding was part of a $2 trillion package that included $350 billion earmarked for the stimulus program. Daines said 20,683 loans have been approved for Montana businesses totaling more than $1.74 billion in relief. Also on Monday, as restaurants across Montana began a phased reopening, the Montana Department of Labor and Industry said it issued more than 57,000 uninsurance payments last week, totaling more than $75 million. “We understand that this is an uncertain

A number of Republicans in the Senate are starting to raise concerns about the massive amount of money the U.S. has spent combatting coronavirus, the Daily Caller has learned. The federal government has appropriated nearly $3 trillion in roughly six weeks for coronavirus relief and number of Republican Senators shared their concerns over the amount of money being spent, when asked by the Daily Caller. Many are saying they are encouraged to see states reopen their economies so that the borrowing from the federal government slows down. “Congress took unprecedented action to provide emergency relief from this economic devastation to

The COVID crisis should transcend politics. After all, more than 60,000 Americans have died and more than 1.1 million of us have been sickened. Astonishingly, most people agree those numbers are conservative. But of course it is political. The infighting has been intense and greatly counterproductive. On every level, too, we’ve seen examples of dubious policy decisions. Across the country, we citizens have witnessed far less reliance on public health experts and sound science than we’d like as politicians make decisions that could mean life or death. We’ve also seen our economy, so sturdy and vibrant just a couple of

HELENA – The Office of Senator Steve Daines announced Daines obtained an extra $310 billion dollars for the Paycheck Protection Program accessible to small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic Monday. According to a release from the Office of Senator Steve Daines, more than 13,000 small businesses in the state have collected a total of more than $1.4 billion in PPP funding all together as of April 16.

BIG SKY – The fifth installment of the weekly EBS virtual Town Hall meetings featured a diverse panel of speakers that touched on a number of topics ranging from vaccines to live and virtual musical performances. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, who is originally from Bozeman, brought a Capitol Hill perspective recapping the series of aid packages and legislation that have been passing through the federal government to support those struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Daines said he’s been fighting on behalf of Montana in the midst of these nationally scaled decisions, making sure state businesses like taverns are included within

BILLINGS — The Montana Stockgrowers Association (MSGA) and 22 other state cattlemen’s associations signed a letter requesting an investigation of beef pricing margins by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) which resulted from two recent extreme market shifts due to a packing plant fire in Holcomb, Kansas, in August 2019, and more recently due to COVID-19. Fred Wacker is the MSGA president from Miles City and says they believe determining evidence of any fraudulent business practices within the meatpacking industry is vital to our producer’s continuity of business and needs to be identified quickly and rectified immediately. “Montana Stockgrowers feels

New York (CNN Business)United States Senators have a new idea to boost struggling local news outlets in their home states: Ads from the federal government. Nearly three-quarters of the US Senate have signed a letter to the Trump administration encouraging various agencies to “increase advertising in local newspapers and on broadcast stations in order to help ensure they are able to continue to operate throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.” More than half of the members of the US House of Representatives have lent their names to a letter endorsing the same idea earlier this week. It remains to be seen whether federal agencies will