(enchanted classical music) - [Announcer] Montana PBS Reports, Debate Night, the US House, Montana's Second District.

Production support was provided by the Greater Montana Foundation and by viewers like you, who are Friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(enchanted classical music continues) - Good evening, and welcome to Montana PBS Reports, Debate Night, the Race for Montana's Second Congressional District.

I'm John Twiggs.

- And I'm Anna Rau.

We'd also like to welcome our listeners joining us on Montana Public Radio, and Yellowstone Public Radio, and also nationwide on CfaN.

- We are utilizing our inclusion requirements tonight, and you can find those on our website at montanapbs.org.

The candidates meeting that criteria are here with us tonight, and they are in the studio Republican Incumbent Congressman, Matt Rosendale, Democrat candidate, Penny Ronning and Independent candidate, Gary Buchanan.

- And we have a slightly different format tonight.

Each of the candidates will have an initial 90 seconds to answer the question.

After that, there's going to be an opportunity for follow ups and rebuttals, if necessary.

- We'll finish the debate with a 90 seconds closing statement from each candidate, so let's get started.

And we're going to begin with a question that is top of mind for a lot of Montanans.

- Well, currently the US inflation rate stands at more than 8%.

While this isn't great, it's down a little bit from a 40-year-high of 9.1% in June, and it came down after the Fed approved several historic rate hikes.

Given the complex nature of inflation, do you think that there's anything Congress move the needle quickly on this issue?

The first answer to this question goes - Thank you so much.

We have been getting this question, and for a moment and really examine how inflation came about.

And it really came about because of the bad policies, the economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s when we shipped so many of our jobs over to China.

What we saw during the pandemic is that the Chinese government kept their workers and kept their population inside and locked away and isolated during the pandemic.

And so those workers weren't making a lot of the products that Americans need and American manufacturing needs to actually produce the supplies that we need.

We also have had a backup in the supply chain.

So I think one of the things that Congress can do, immediately, is to address that supply chain.

We need to start moving those products from China to the United States where our manufacturing can continue to progress.

We also need to look at it at a long term.

The long term is to bring jobs back to the United States.

We bring blue collar jobs, industry jobs, and manufacturing jobs back to the United States and invest in the American workforce and in the American productivity.

- Thank you, Congressman Rosendale.

- We had economists from all over the country and all over the nation.

The top economists tell us that if the federal government continued to pump revenue into the economy when there wasn't the purchasing power available out there, that it was gonna drive inflation right up, and that's exactly what we saw happen.

This is not a mystery.

Unfortunately, just one of the pieces of legislation that was passed under the Democrat control over Congress, Senate, and the White House, $1.9 trillion, which was supposed to have been for so-called COVID relief, the Inspector General just came out within the last 30 days and identified 163 billion worth of waste and fraud that they can't even account for.

The PPP Program, they found an additional $80 billion worth of waste and fraud.

So combined together, you're looking at a quarter of a trillion dollars of waste and fraud that basically was fueling into the economy.

The other big driving factor of inflation are the fuel prices, we can't ignore that.

And the Biden Administration dropped the fuel production, the crude oil production here domestically by nearly two million barrels a day.

We just saw OPEC come out and announce that they're going to reduce their production by two million barrels a day.

But we're gonna be talking about that later on.

But our domestic production being reduced by that much driving the fuel prices up, the cost of fuel touches every single product, the freight to deliver those products.

And that's another thing that that's driving this inflation that we have a plan on on how to turn that around once Republicans gain control of Congress.

- Thank you, and an answer from Gary Buchanan.

- A few months ago, actually, that one we filed, I filed for office, inflation was supposed to be transitory.

The Fed literally thought it was transitory.

Clearly it's not, but I support the Fed.

Those of us in business in the early '80s, remember what 16 to 18% meant.

I met a lady in Webo the other night who paid, in those years, 17% for her first mortgage.

We cannot go there.

So the pain right now is something that we actually need to go through.

It's very painful for our investment accounts and for gas and everything else.

But we have to avoid the Fed and I'll get to the fiscal part of that in a moment.

The Fed has to keep the brakes on, so we do not fall into a stagflation environment or a period where rates actually hurt the economy more than we do now.

From a fiscal standpoint, I think both parties have missed the boat in terms of overspending.

I think that there are a number of bills that have over stimulated the economy.

I think we are in that that period now, and we gotta be very careful on the fiscal side, the spending side, not to make it worse, Spending is not the way to get out of this inflation cycle.

- We now have an opportunity for a follow up or rebuttal from each of the candidates.

We'll go in that order again and we'll start with Penny Ronning.

- Thank you.

So what we just heard from Mr. Rosendale was zero answer and zero solution.

The only thing he talked about was blame the entire time.

Only at the end did he say that when Republicans get back into control that there would be a solution, yet we've seen none.

We've seen that he cannot bring a solution in a bipartisan nature.

He offered no solutions in 90 seconds.

I would say that I also agree with Mr. Buchanan.

When I was earning my MBA, one of the things I really enjoyed studying was the Federal Reserve.

To think the Federal Reserve is doing a good job, I think they're late to the game in how they were addressing inflation.

But I do think that they are doing a good job and that I agree with Mr. Buchanan, that we just have to stick this out, get through it.

And I agree that, or I should say I believe that investment is different than spending, and again, we need to invest in the American workforce.

- Thank you, Congressman Rosendale.

- Yeah, apparently Ms. Ronning wasn't listening to my answer because I did say we have to stop spending so much.

The Democrat Party complete control of Washington DC has added an additional $5 trillion worth of new spending to the budget, $5 trillion over a 20-month period.

And we have to find places to stop allowing this to take place.

And the other problem is the two million barrels worth of crude oil a day that the Biden Administration has cut out of our production.

I introduced legislation in the Natural Resource Committee.

Many of my colleagues, Republicans introduced.

We've got a package of eight bills to increase, not only the leasing, when our public lands that are supposed to be open to this oil and gas production, but also to make sure that they're permitted, pipelines are permitted, liquid natural gas facilities are permitted so that we can ease this problem of the accelerated energy cost.

And that is also going to be a major factor in helping us reduce this inflation.

- Thank you, and a final follow up from Gary Buchanan.

- The Saudis have have given us no help and I don't blame the president and I think Republicans in Congress should be just as critical with them raising prices today.

On a positive note, shipping cargo prices for the cargo boxes have gone from $20,000 to 3,000.

So there's, Penny, about supply chain, there are some things that appear to be getting better in the supply chain, but the Saudis today deserve the criticism that that they're getting, they deserve it from folks like you, Matt, that this is not the right time for, once again, the Saudis to jack us around in an high-inflation environment.

- Thank you, we'll move on now.

You touched on it a little bit about the fact that part of the inflation equation is energy independence.

Montana has a long history with energy in our state's economy.

Unfortunately, it's been a boom and bust cycle that's gone with that.

The good times have been really good.

The bad times have been really bad.

So in the House of Representatives, what would be your plan to help Montanans have a responsible independent energy but with a more consistent economy?

And we'll start with Congressman Rosendale.

- Thank you, I appreciate that, John.

We have already introduced, Republicans have introduced this PS session, eight bills to make sure that we open the leases packet.

The court ordered the Biden Administration to open these public lands that were already open to public leasing of oil and gas resources.

And so we've put a bill forward to make sure that that takes place.

We put another piece of legislation forward to make sure that once those leases are opened up, that as long as the folks that have obtained those leases have fulfilled their criteria that the permits are issued so that they can actually drill for those resources.

We've also put forth legislation to make sure that the pipelines are going to be permitted to make sure that we can move those resources around.

And then again, we've got, at least, three natural gas facilities that are ready now to go online so that we could start handling this product.

Not only is that going to be good for our economy, but it's also gonna be good for our national security.

These are products that we could also be exporting and helping some of our friends over in Europe that right now are so dependent on Russian energy.

And so that is exactly where we are focused to make sure that we can do that.

This administration shut down the Keystone XL pipeline the day that they walked in the office.

Very soon thereafter they lifted the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

They started negotiating with Iran again.

There was a lot of decisions that were made to compromise our energy production international security.

- Thank you, our next response from Gary Buchanan.

- From a federal level, one of the things we have to address is our energy electrical demand, is raised at 2% a year.

And our ability to transmit electricity is only going up 1%.

So we have grid problems that we have to solve as well.

I'm for energy independence.

I think have challenged the oil and gas industry to keep drilling, to keep producing oil because we need it at this period.

We can get to renewables later.

I met with the refinery in Great Falls, Calumet, and they are putting $100 million plus into a renewable diesel project, using renewables to get there.

That's the kind of thing that I think the industry can do.

We cannot allow Ukrainian tanks to run out of diesel.

In this country, we're gonna have to get ourselves to renewable energy, but we're gonna have to continue to work very hard on being energy independent in the meantime.

- Thank you, and our next response from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, so I believe that we are, and we have moved in the direction of There are plenty of oil leases that are up to be used right now, but not all of the developers are actually drilling for oil right now.

And so that is one of the areas that we could work on is working with developers to start drilling again.

But I do believe that in a state like Montana, that we have the opportunity to not only do oil and gas and do drilling and do coal, but we have the opportunity to introduce renewable energy with solar and wind.

We are a great state and we have the opportunity right now to increase the job market with those renewables as well as working on the energy resources that we have currently in production.

So my encouragement with regard to the economy 'cause that was part of the question, is that we do focus on incorporating renewable energy as well as continue to work with the coal and the oil and gas industry and the work that they're doing.

- Thank you, we have a follow-up rebuttal and I wanna shift it just a little bit then.

You talked about different ideas that you had there, but if you had to consider it in terms of a top consideration within your plan, what would that be?

Would it be the economy, would it be the climate?

Would it be national security?

What drives the idea behind your plan?

Congressman Rosendale, start with you.

- National security and the economy are interlinked, as far as I'm concerned.

I think they're very closely linked.

And when we start talking about energy independence, energy dominance, it is absolutely critical that we can maintain that because if not, then we become dependent on adversaries, tyrants, across the world.

We saw, again, President Biden go around the world to some very bad places and some very bad leaders and tried to get energy from them.

It is not necessary.

We have the ability to do that right here, right now.

I visited the Black Eagle Hydro facility in Great Falls today.

There's 90,000 dams across our nation and of those 90,000 dams, only 2,300 are utilizing hydroelectricity.

We need to look more into that.

We need to start looking at the technology that's been developed for the nuclear plants.

They have micro plants now, package plants that we could utilize, and all of this is gonna help us reduce our carbon footprint.

- Thank you, Gary Buchanan.

- Well, before you mentioned the top three or four, I think national security, I think inflation, I think pro-choice, and I think crime are the four top things that I'm hearing.

On national security, that's the reason I filed.

With Matt, voted with two others to not support Ukraine, 426 to 3.

When he also didn't commend the capital police force, I've decided to file.

Since then you voted against Sweden and Finland joining NATO, you voted against funding NATO, and just last Friday you voted against, again, to providing arms to Ukraine.

Inflation, we've talked about, I think is a critical issue.

Choice, I think, is extremely important with the reversal on Roe versus Wade.

On crime, I think, in Billings at least, it's probably the number one concern from downtown Billings.

I voted to fund police, not defund them like the Democratic Party put their stem cells in a bind last year.

- And our final follow up from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, so I guess if we're talking about what our top issue items are and what we believe that the top issue items are for Montanans, I would say inflation and economy is one of those top issue items, reproductive rights, the 2nd Amendment, but also agriculture.

In the State of Montana, agriculture is our number one industry, our number one economy driver.

I think with an ag industry in Montana, we need to look at ways that we are saving and protecting the family farm and ranch.

When we look at what our family farm and ranches have had to struggle through in losing their fair shot at the marketplace, I think that that's one of the industries that we've got to make a priority.

I think that the ag industry and the economy are intricately tied to healthcare.

Healthcare is an issue that I'm hearing about as I travel the 41 counties.

I think those are all of the issues that we need to be addressing as priority issues.

- Thank you, and on to our next question.

- Right, you guys talked about this a little bit in your last answer, so let's dive right into it.

The United States has provided more than $15 billion in military aid to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country last winter.

This is roughly 0.03% of the federal $5.5 trillion budget.

How much aid do you feel we should provide to Ukraine?

And the first crack at this question goes to you.

- As much as we need for Ukraine to win.

You know, Mitt Romney 12, 14 years ago was kinda laughed at when he said that Russia was the number one national security problem.

Of course, we were consumed in the Middle East and perhaps understandable, but he was right.

We cannot give up the ground in Ukraine.

It's a renewal of the Cold War all over again, and I don't think that we stop giving until the Ukrainians win the war.

And I would vote for any and all support that Ukraine needs to win the war.

- Thank you, our next answer from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, so for a number of years my career was a flight attendant and I flew internationally.

I also flew domestically.

For two years, I was a United flight attendant where I worked, I'm sorry, I flew for United for almost five years, for two of those years, one of my routes was United Flight 93.

I had friends and colleagues that died that day.

They were in hand-to-hand combat with terrorists.

So national security is very personal to me, but so is our democracy and so is democracy worldwide.

When we take a look at what Russia is doing to Ukraine, the entire world needs to stop and pay attention.

We cannot allow dictators like Putin to invade other countries, sovereign nations, peaceful nations like Ukraine.

We not only have to help and continue to supply aid to Ukraine, and I would agree with Mr. Buchanan that we continue to supply aid until Ukraine wins, but we also have to look at our allies around the world, and help them because they're not that far from Russia either.

And we need to join forces with our allies and continue to address the Ukraine situation as a global force and a global partnership.

- Thank you, and an answer from Congressman Rosendale.

- First, I think, it's really important for everybody to understand that is a tragic situation that Russia invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked situation.

And that there's a lot of people that have lost their lives and there's a lot of people that have been dislocated and forced to leave their country, they're home, and we all feel bad for that.

Unfortunately, Anna, your number's not even close.

There's been $70 billion worth of aid that has -- - [Anna] I was just talking military aid.

- Okay, well $70 billion has already been sent to Ukraine, okay, to help in this effort.

And at the same time that that's taking place, what we have to do is look back and see what led to this situation, and this is where consequences result from the elections, and leaders do matter.

And we had the Keystone XL, which was canceled on day one.

We saw the Nord Stream 2 that was canceled soon there after.

The sanctions that we had on them.

We saw President Biden cancel the Iran deal, entered back into negotiations with them, and then we saw a terrible, terrible flailed withdrawal from Afghanistan.

All of those things is what empowered Putin to go in and invade into Ukraine.

And right now we have 105,000 people that died in our own country last year from drug overdoses.

The vast majority was from Fentanyl and that all came from Mexico, and for $8 billion we could secure our own border.

And I think that's what we need to do.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, and I did have a follow-up question to that.

Nobody brought up this nuclear weapons thing.

Vladimir Putin has made veiled threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

If he follows through on that, of course, this is a hypothetical.

Would you support some sort of military response from the US, excuse me, and what would that be?

And the first response, of course, is Candidate Buchanan.

- Matt's answers on Ukraine reaffirmed why I filed.

I think we have to continue to fund it to where we accomplished the job.

On nuclear weapons, I think, that's the scariest part.

I'm reminded, the previous president, he tried to sandbag Ukraine, he tried to corrupt Ukraine, as part of his work with Zelensky.

We need to not sandbag him or attempt to corrupt him like the previous administration did.

We need to support him.

I think the nuclear weapon things has to be handled and I think the military's being very careful how it's being handled, but the pro-Putin part of the Republican Party, is enabling this guy, Putin, to threaten military weapons.

We would have to do a proportionate response.

God forbid what that would be.

But I think we have to keep a very careful diplomatic and military eye on exactly what Putin has planned next for the world.

- Thank you, and our next follow up, to Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, Matt, you absolutely need Feel bad about what's happened in Ukraine.

We all feel bad, children have been tortured, entire cities have been devastated.

Men and women have had their hands tied behind their back and they have been tortured and slaughtered.

400 graves were recently found.

We all feel bad.

No, that's not what we feel.

We feel horrified, we feel mortified, and we feel like we have not been represented.

You played blame and never gave an answer to the question.

You blamed the Democrats, you blamed Biden, but I think you need to have a history lesson.

First of all on Keystone XL.

Keystone XL was shut down by Trans-Canada.

I think you need to have a history lesson on your votes.

- Thank you, and final follow up, to Congressman Rosendale.

- Sure, sure.

Keystone XL Pipeline was permitted, and on his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order and canceled that permit or that pipeline would be up and functioning right now.

While I did not support sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, what I did support was to make sure that we put sanctions on Russia to try and keep them from executing that war.

We stopped their crude oil imports to the United States.

We were literally buying crude oil from Russia at the exact same time that folks were trying to get us to go to war with them.

We put economic sanctions on Putin as well, and then we also put sanctions on him directly in case there was any war crimes that were identified that he was involved with.

That is the tack that I think we need to do.

When we start talking about suffering, I went to the southern border, we've got 250,000 to 300,000 people a month that are coming in and they are enduring incredible sexual assaults and terrible treatment for their entire time that they travel to try and even get into our country.

- Thank you, we will move on now to a new topic and that's the 2nd Amendment here in Montana.

And following the Uvalde mass shooting that happened, the school shooting in May, Congress passed some of the first significant gun legislation in Now, some felt that the expanded background checks and the red flag laws were a continued infringement on their rights, while others felt it didn't go far enough.

So tonight, where do you stand on our current state of gun regulation?

Is it too much, should there be more?

And we'll start with Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, so I believe that we are a country that's done extraordinary things.

We've sent men to the moon.

We have built underground transportation systems.

We have built bridges that expand water scapes that are extraordinary.

We are a country that can protect the 2nd Amendment and the 2nd grader at the same time.

Gun ownership is normal in our country.

Democrats own guns, Independents own guns, Green Party own guns, Republicans own guns.

Gun ownership is normal.

Gun violence should never be normalized or normal.

We have the opportunity in our country to come together as a nation, to protect one another, to come around a table and discuss how we address the 2nd Amendment in the same way we address the 1st Amendment, the 19th Amendment, the 13th Amendment.

It's a part of our constitution that we should be debating and discussing and not be afraid of.

I think the bipartisan legislation that has now passed is a good start, and I think this is an opportunity for us to find ways to protect one another when we go into our public spaces and especially protect our children and protect those that have attempted suicide with a gun.

- Thank you, our next response from Congressman Rosendale.

- So the two common themes that we see in every one of these tragic incidences are gun free zones and severe mental illness.

I served on a private nonprofit mental health agency for several years as a board member.

So I saw a very, very diverse amount of mental health problems from folks that just had a chemical imbalance from when they hit adolescence to folks that, unfortunately, had mental health problems because they had substance abuse issues.

And most of these things, what we discovered, is going to take long term if not perpetual care, to make sure that they have the proper treatment that they need.

I worked extremely hard when I was the auditor for the State of Montana to make sure that we deliver mental health care with the same parody that we did with physical conditions.

And I've also voted to support mental health treatment at the federal level to make sure we can deliver that.

When it comes to the gun free zones, I absolutely believe that we need to make sure that we remove any barriers that are in place for the school districts to provide the type of security that they need, that they feel is necessary for their schools.

Those districts in Deer Creek, Dawson County have a lot big different needs than what we have in Hell Gate in Missoula, and they need to be able to address that.

I saw a sheriff, Jesse Slaughter, in Cascade County is working right now with the school districts to try and help them to accommodate each of their needs and and do it in a specific way that their boards are comfortable with.

- Thank you, and our next answer from Gary Buchanan.

- I support the 2nd Amendment.

I own guns.

They're sporting guns.

I've given most of them to my grandson at this stage, and I'll be chasing him around hunting, I think, again, this fall, depending on this fall.

I would've supported the Compromise Amendment.

I think it was in the right direction.

Matt, you said you for mental health, but a bunch of that bill was for mental health.

Billions of dollars of that went to mental health.

And I agree with you, that it's a serious problem but you gotta put your money where your mouth is and support a bill that would did bring mental health support to all of the states.

So I would've supported the Compromise Bill.

I met a grandfather, slightly younger than me 'cause he drops his kids off at school in Helen and he told me at a meeting that I conducted that when he dropped his grandchildren off in the morning and they were elementary school kids that he wrote down what they were wearing because if there was a mass killing, he'd be able to identify his grandchildren by writing down what they were wearing that day.

So we've gotta balance the 2nd Amendment, which I support and we gotta look at mental health as Matt has suggested.

And we also gotta work on not mass murdering our children and grandchildren.

- Thank you, we'll have a follow up and rebuttal.

We'll start with Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, so Matt, you voted against every single victims of crime bail when you were in the state legislature as well as now a Representative in the House of Representatives.

Literally, every single one you have voted to not support victims of crime.

You talk about the horrors at the border and yet you don't wanna fund services that actually help victims.

You talk about mental health and yet you voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, you voted against Build Back Better, you voted against all of the bills that actually have funding in place to address and help with mental illness within our country, to help with substance abuse addiction, to help against all of these things that you say play a part in the gun violence that we're seeing.

You voted against those very resources that could provide that help.

- Thank you, next follow up from Congressman Rosendale.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

Any legislation that comes through that compromises due process for any of our citizens, then I'm gonna vote against that.

Anytime we have red flag laws that are gonna compromise and undermine the 2nd Amendment rights of the people across our state, I'm gonna vote against that.

Both of my opponents have supported the bans on semi-automatic rifles.

They will say that they haven't but the ban on the purchases of semi-automatic rifles, I think that that is a complete violation of the 2nd Amendment, and I'm going to be on the front line for you making sure that just because a piece of legislation that comes through has a little bit of a benefit in it, if it's going to compromise your liberties, your constitutional rights, then I'm gonna continue to vote against this.

- Thank you, and a final follow up from Gary Buchanan.

- Yeah, I have not voted to ban automatic weapons.

I'm also against confiscating automatic weapons.

I think that would lead to a civil war in this state.

But I am for background checks, I'm for parts of the compromise between 18 and 21 years old kids, young men and young women.

I think we have to move ahead, but I'm not against banning automatic rifles and I'm not against confiscating them, but I do think that we have to be very careful to get them in hands that make sense.

And I think the Red Flag Program has worked in Florida for Governor DeSantis, who I think is a very conservative governor.

They sometimes don't work, they didn't work in a mass killing in Minnesota recently.

But I think they are a start and I think we have to proceed in that direction.

- Thank you.

- Okay, next topic.

Since the fall of Roe versus Wade this last spring, Democrats and Republicans have introduced bills to both preserve abortion rights and alternatively to ban them.

Do you feel Congress should wade into this issue or do you believe we should leave it up to this states?

And the first response to this question goes to Congressman Rosendale.

- Thank you.

I'll tell you, when Roe v. Wade came out in 1973, horribly ironic that is the exact same year that they put the Endangered Species Act into place.

And I don't know how many wolves we've saved and I don't know how many bears that we've saved, but I can tell you we have killed about and that's very troubling to me.

So when the Supreme Court finally came out and overturned that decision with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, I was very pleased because now this has been transferred back down to the states where this belongs.

And then the states and their legislators who are the closest to the people are going to be able to make these decisions.

I am 100% pro-life.

I believe that when an abortion takes place, that there are two victims.

I believe the mother and the child are both a victim in this situation.

And I believe that every life does have value and we should do everything that we can to preserve each of those lives.

- Thank you.

Gary Buchanan our next response.

- Wow Matt, wolves, bears, and women.

I think that the Roe versus Wade, even the leak of it created an event across the country.

And I think Republicans are starting to back up and be more reasonable because of the vote in Kansas.

I think the vote in Kansas surprised a lot of Republicans.

I think we have to approach it as a woman's right, it's part of human rights.

I met recently with 11 19-year-olds and single, smart students all finishing their first year.

We talked about all sorts of things.

But the end of the night I said, "What's the most important thing?"

And it surprised me.

It was the Dobbs decision and a young gay man was there.

There were some activists were there and their concern is, "Who's next in this whole process?"

I think our Montana constitution is very, very strong on privacy.

And I think it's extremely important.

I think it's gonna become under attack, our constitution, it already is.

I think the Kansas votes backed up some of these calls for a special session, but I think we should stay the heck out of women's rights.

I've recently visited with a statewide Republican leader and he asked me what an Independent was, and I said, "It's easy, it's to constrain the Democrats getting in our wallet and keep you guys out of our bedroom."

And I feel very strongly.

Lindsey Graham has made it a federal issue.

Back to your question, he's making it a federal issue.

I would respond by voting to codify Roe versus Wade at the federal level.

- Thank you, and our next response from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, a woman's womb just got compared to animals.

To animals.

In 1973, the death toll became lower and increasingly went down in the death of women that had found themselves in the midst of a pregnancy for whatever reason was going to be challenging in their life or challenging to their life.

For the first time in 1973, women got the right to have autonomy over their own reproductive rights and over their own body.

From that point forward, women started to get additional rights.

We could have a bank account, we could have a credit card, we could have other decisions that were ours, that a sitting elected official would compare the womb of a woman to an animal is unconscionable to me.

Where have we fallen to say that a gender is actually comparable to an animal?

How far we have fallen.

I will fight for equality for those that deserve to be considered equal.

- Thank you, time now for follow ups and we'll begin with Congressman Rosendale.

- Oh, I would just say that I will fight for the 63 million dead children that are out there now, that will never become doctors, that will never become attorneys, that will never become broadcasters, that will never invent some of the new drugs and technology that we need to keep other people alive.

I will fight for the people that don't want their dollars to be used to fund abortions.

And we see the federal government trying taking those dollars, their tax dollars and using them to fund abortions.

I will fight to make sure that the physicians that are in medical facilities across this country, that have strongly held religious beliefs, that they don't want to perform those abortions, that they aren't going to be forced to perform abortions or have to leave their jobs.

That's who I'm gonna be fighting for and they need to be helped every single day as well.

- Thank you, our next follow up from Gary Buchanan.

- I think that Lindsey Graham's attempt to federalize the issue goes against everything the rest of the Republican Party is saying.

And it's reaffirmed, it's actually convinced me that if he introduces that bill, it's time to codify Roe versus Wade.

- Thank you, and our final follow up from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you, so religious freedom is you have the right to worship as you choose in your life.

What you don't have the right to do is say your religion dictates my life or another individual's life.

Freedom of religion is something we need to discuss too in our country, and I hope we get the opportunity to do that.

I personally am a Christian, Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior, but I do see that there is value in life and that be the life of a woman as well.

I don't know of anyone who is pro-abortion meaning killing, but abortion is healthcare and it is the healthcare of that woman and that life.

It is the healthcare of a family.

And Mr. Rosendale, no, you will not protect life.

You have proven that over and over again on your votes.

- Thank you all, we're going to move forward now.

And in terms of healthcare and more specifically mental health and more directly there, the Native American men and women of Montana.

Across our entire state, the entire population, the suicide rate in Montana is alarmingly high, but on a reservation it is at a crisis level.

So do you think that the federal government could or should help with an issue that persists in our native communities?

And we'll start with Gary Buchanan.

- I've walked in the Suicide Walk Development Project in Billings.

I've lost my mother and my sister to suicide many, many years ago, but I work with people in terms of the pain is enduring, but these are extremely important programs that are going on.

Suicide rates in the state are actually higher than drug overdose deaths.

And so it's an extremely important issue and I applaud those who are working.

We have a tremendous group in Billings and I bet you have groups across the state that are working with suicide victims.

And that's the people that survive suicides.

And I know how difficult that is.

Reservations, it's a very, very big problem.

I think the BIA and other federal organizations should be more involved, but it's an extremely difficult problem in the reservations and we need to do a lot more work.

- Thank you, our next answer from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you.

First of all, I wanna extend my condolences Gary.

That is a hard thing to live through and my heart goes out to your family and to you.

My family has experienced loss with suicide as well.

My cousin committed suicide, completed suicide.

I've lost my best friend to suicide.

So I understand the impact.

When I think about reservations, my mom was a career federal employee.

The majority of her career was in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

I was very fortunate as a young child to be taken around to the different tribal nations, and have so much respect for the tribal nations.

But when we think about the level of poverty that is on our tribal nations right now here in Montana, we think about the broken treaties, the broken promises, the fact that most tribal members don't even own their own land.

Their land is in a trust.

So they don't have the ability to develop commerce.

They don't have the ability to cash a check on their own land.

These are some of the things that we need to be addressing.

We need to be addressing poverty.

Once we start addressing poverty, we're going to start to see the ripple effect into the improvement in mental health, into the improvement of substance abuse addiction.

But we have to look at the broken treaties and the broken promises that the federal government, the state government have done to our tribal nations and we need to start to repair those.

- Thank you, and our next answer from Congressman Rosendale.

- We have two large populations of demographic that are having problems with suicide at very, very high rates in our state, unfortunately, and that's our veteran's population and the tribal populations.

And I've been working extremely hard with both of these communities to try and work on things to reduce these rates.

One of the big, big shining stars that we've seen here in Montana is the Island Mountain at Rocky Boy Reservation.

They have a call center, they have a loan program that they have expanded into.

They have expanded into Yellowstone County.

They are buying land and starting to develop property and send some of the tribal members down there as contractors to build homes, and they are absolutely a model which goes to lifting folks out of poverty and breaking that terrible, terrible cycle of dependence.

And that is a big part of it.

But we also have to recognize that there are folks that are still gonna be struggling with substance abuse and just mental health issues.

And that's why I have supported legislation, standalone legislation to make sure that we do properly fund mental health at the federal level and at the state level to make sure that we have parity in statute so that all mental health gets treated with the same level that that physical conditions do.

And that's gonna give us the ability to not only deliver to telehealth, but make sure that we get providers out there into these communities.

- Thank you, time now for our follow ups and rebuttals.

We'll start with Gary Buchanan.

- My wife and I and our kids grew up there, live north of the Crow reservation in the country.

My wife, Norma, and I have turned over our property, our horse property 'cause our horses have all died, to two young veterans that are providing equine therapy, an amazing, interesting thought, with horses.

And they're two veterans, and and his wife, one of the gentleman's wife, I've turned over to help that program, and they're helping Native Americans, veterans, and in general, they're focused on veterans with PTSD, and I'm proud to be a part of it.

- Thank you, our next follow up from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you.

So Matt, it's interesting you would say Rocky Boy because that's exactly the reservation I was just on.

It's exactly the group I just met with last week where we talked about the struggles of poverty, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of ability to have a banking system right on the reservation, the lack of ability to develop collateral, the lack of ability to develop good credit.

These are all things that the government does need to address, we do need to look at.

These are systemic issues to mental health, to stress, to suicide.

Veterans absolutely couldn't agree more.

You have voted against every bill to help veterans.

So I think the things that you're saying here, don't follow suit with the actions you actually take in Washington DC.

- Thank you, and our final follow up to Congressman Rosendale.

- Sure, Veterans Affairs Committee, we've really made a lot of progress.

We actually started having more bipartisan work in the last several months than I've seen over the last two years, quite frankly.

And that's where we're starting to take a holistic look at each of these veterans so that we can find exactly what is driving some of these problems when they have these terrible thoughts about taking their lives.

A lot of times you find out that they have pain.

Okay, the pain is keeping them from eating properly.

We were starting to take this holistic look at their diet, at their pain, at everything to find out what is the best method to treat this specific veteran.

And that way we're having a lot of success.

The Veteran's Hospital is working with us to make sure we can implement this and we have passed legislation to make sure that those benefits are being delivered.

And we're also identifying other areas where there's been a lot of waste in the Veteran's Administration through some of their IT programs and such, literally, billions of dollars that we can rework that money as well.

- Thank you all.

We do have time for one more question.

We won't have a chance for a follow up on this one so we can just get your answer on this final question.

- Yep.

Last one, we made it.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes nearly 370 billion in investments in clean energy and renewables and is forecast to decrease the US greenhouse gas emissions, by roughly 40% below 2005 levels, by 2030.

Do you believe we should be doing more or less about the climate issue?

The first answer to this question goes - Thank you.

I think we absolutely need I think the young people are showing us the way.

I think the young people are giving voice to this issue like nothing I've ever seen.

They are rising up throughout the world to tell us what they want for their future.

The reality is, the age of us up here.

I think Matt and I are the same age.

Gary's a bit older, but the...

I was generous, I was generous.

But the reality is that we're making decisions for future generations.

The decisions we need to be making now about the future of this planet are ones that we need to be listening to those young people about what they want.

So do I think we need to be doing more and need to be more aggressive in how we are addressing climate change?

Yes, I do.

- Thank you, our next response from Congressman Rosendale.

- Thank you, you know, each of us up here wants clean air.

We want clean water, we want clean safe communities, and we all are trying to work to achieve that.

What I don't believe is that the federal government should pass the Inflation Acceleration Act at another $400 billion worth of spending on pet projects to pet investors that they've made decisions about who deserve to have this money.

I did an energy tour approximately two months ago with several members of Congress.

I brought them here to Montana.

We toured the Cenex Harvest States Oil Refinery in Laurel.

We went to the Cole Strip Power Plant, we went to the Palladium Mine in Stillwater, and we went to the brand new wind farm just north of Mile City.

The only reason that wind farm is possible to be functioning is because it received a $30 million rebate from the federal government.

And the regulatory climate is so bad that Colstrip, units one and two, have been shut down, which means that there's all that additional space on the transmission lines that they can run that electricity through.

I think that we have businesses and industries across our country that are developing the best technology to make sure that our energy is more efficient, that it's more clean and no one, quite frankly, does it better than we do right here in the United States.

But we don't need the federal government spending $400 billion to pick the winners and losers.

- Thank you, and our next answer from Gary Buchanan.

- Yeah, I didn't support the Build Back Better program in its entirety.

There are lots of great pieces to it, but in its entirety, it was inflationary in a time where we've got to stop stimulating the economy.

I would have voted, I think Senator Manson deserves some credit, I would've voted for the final product.

It's about 85% climate control.

It looks like it has some, climate change, excuse me.

And it looks like it has some promising values.

It also provided some minor health things in the scheme of things, but some important help for health.

I think there are a lot of issues in Montana.

I was in HAVA recently and talked with a bunch of folks there.

They were shocked, Matt, that you voted against $100 million for the Milk River Irrigation Project.

That's a critical issue up there.

And as I go around talking to folks, they believe in climate change.

They want to have solutions for that.

And I think that's the objective for anyone that gets into Congress, whether it's any one of the three of us.

- Thank you, thank you all.

We're towards the end of our hour now, so it's time now for closing statements from each of the candidates.

We had a drawing before the debate to determine the order of these closing statements.

And first up it will be Gary Buchanan.

- Yeah, I keep getting first, Matt and Penny.

I think there's an eight-lane highway down the middle of Montana.

I think people are very frustrated, very tired of partisan politics.

The extremes of my partners here have really made it a 10-lane highway.

And I think that people are very, very tired of the extremes of party politics.

I've mentioned Matt's, his opposition to Ukraine and NATO and so forth, but when he voted against the Pittman-Robertson Act.

That's the reason I'm getting support from sportsman's organizations, hunters and anglers across the state.

That act, which he wants to repeal, has helped the Fish & Wildlife and parks in numerous hunting and angling projects, conservation projects.

A couple weeks ago, Penny and Glen Dive called me a closet Republican on the same weekend Matt called me a closet Democrat.

My answer to that is, perfect.

Penny, I'm more conservative than you are, Penny, we obviously agree on some issues.

I'm a businessman, I've been in investment business since 1979.

It'd be 43 years.

I think some of the comments that you've been making lately, Penny, are anti-business.

Last night after we talked about ethics in social media, you put on social media and I don't know which one, and you attacked my supporters, including Governor Roscoe and Dorothy Bradley.

You attacked my family.

You attack business men and women in general.

And I think that represents the part of the Democratic Party that has lost control nationally and in Montana.

So I'm in the middle.

I had raised 15,000 signatures from over 500 volunteers.

Matt, I have 2,000 individual contributors from Montana supporting my efforts.

- Thank you, our next closing statement from Penny Ronning.

- Thank you.

So I think that what we need to stop doing is electing millionaires to Congress.

They don't live like the rest of us live.

They don't live like 95, 96, 97% of Montanans live.

We need to start electing Montanans.

When I think about my childhood memories, my childhood memories are Montana.

When I think about where I graduated from film school, was right here in this studio.

I feel like I'm home, I went to MSU, this is where I graduated.

I'm a Montanan and that's who we need representing us again, someone who understands what real world issues are.

Gary, you talk a lot about business.

I have an MBA, I'm pro-business.

My family, I grew up in a small business.

I was the president of the Livingston Downtown Association.

I am pro-business.

All of my votes at Billing City Council have been pro-business.

Your supporters are public officials.

They have accountability to what they did when they were in office.

Your supporters, as you called them, wanted a sales tax.

Your supporters chaired and championed and run.

I think those are things that we need to seriously look at, is who you do surround yourself with.

You talk about business often and how successful you are in business, but you equate success with money.

I equate success with service.

Government is not business, government is service.

And I think that is how it differentiates between the two of us.

- Thank you, and our final closing statement from Congressman Rosendale.

- Thank you, and thank you for putting this debate on this evening, Anna and John, and thank you everybody for joining us tonight.

Elections have consequences and we've seen over the last 20 months what single-party control by the Democrats has done to our country.

We were in a good spot two years ago, and even though we were cripled by the pandemic, we were coming out of it, but now we have higher crime rates, we have higher grocery bills, we have higher fuel costs, We have higher interest rates.

Everything is going up except, quite frankly, your retirement plan, your 401(k), that's not going up at all.

The Republicans in Congress have proposed a lot of things.

I personally have introduced legislation to expand access to healthcare and bring the costs down.

I have introduced legislation to put into place the things that we know will keep our southern border from being wide open.

I have introduced legislation to direct funds to our veterans to make sure that they get benefits that they were promised, that they deserve, that they've earned.

I put into place legislation to try and manage our forests better and to make sure that we can harvest the timber that's there and drill for our oil and gas to get our country back on track again.

So tonight, I humbly ask for your vote.

Let's get this country turned back around again.

And when we do that, what you will see is the Republicans have a plan.

We want to have a strong economy, we want to have a safe country, we want to have a future built on freedom, and we want to have a government that's accountable.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

We want to thank all of the candidates and their campaign staffs for participating in tonight's event.

- Right, and for more political coverage, you can watch Montana PBS Thursdays at 7:00 PM for our new news and public affairs show, Impact.

- From all of us here at Montana PBS, thank you for joining us, and goodnight.

- Goodnight.

(enchanted classical music) - [Announcer] Montana PBS reports Debate Night, the US House, Montana's second district.

Production support was provided by the Greater Montana Foundation and by viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

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