My opponent has talked a lot about making Montana a leader in this country's energy production, but his record doesn't match his rhetoric. Just in the last week, KTVQ in Billings broke the story on Jon Tester's vote against HB 495, introduced by State Representative Alan Olson (R-Roundup) and Jim Keane (D-Butte) in 2001, that allowed the Bull Mountain coal mine to be reopened and become a coal-to-liquids power plant as Governor Brian Schweitzer announced last Monday.

But you'd never know my opponent opposed legislation that allowed the Bull Mountain mine to re-open from the glowing praise he's heaped on the project in recent days. The bill that Tester voted against in 2001, HB 495, allowed revoked coal-mine permits to transfer to new owners without having to go through the entire re-permitting process.  While the new permit holders still were required to follow all public safety and environmental requirements, it significantly sped up the process for the mine to re-open for business.

Without the Olson-Keane bill, the Bull Mountain coal-to-liquids plant would not be a reality for Montanans. Tester's vote against this bill put his extreme environmental agenda ahead of creating 4,200 new jobs and $34 million in additional annual tax revenue for Montana.  To put in context how extreme his position is, the bill he voted against passed the Montana House 96-4 and the Senate 41-7, and was supported by 83% of Democrats.

It saddens me that my opponent would put his extreme agenda ahead of the well being of Montana. The Northern Plains Resource Council, an environmental group that says Tester votes with them 92% of the time, is one of the very groups trying to stop the Bull Mountain coal-to-liquids plant from re-opening.   It's hard to take Jon Tester at his word when he's got these same extreme environmentalists backing his bid for Senate.

It is important to point out the energy bill because of the emphasis on alternative energy sources – renewables, bio-fuels, ethanol, and soy diesel. Those are critical issues. Now they may seem a little less critical, when gas is going at two dollars per gallon for some people, but the high cost of natural gas, for example, contributes to the high cost of fertilizer. So this is a lingering issue in the state of Nebraska, both for rural and urban communities.

The highway bill is another important one. Highways are important in the state of Nebraska. We are geographically challenged – broad expanses and low population density. You ask the people of Nebraska how important roads are to them and they will tell you, “Very.

The continued surge of federal revenues, generated by strong economic growth, have reduced the fiscal year 2006 budget deficit to $250 billion, according to the estimate released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office. These figures include amounts spent in 2006 in Iraq and Afghanistan and Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. This estimate is sharply lower than the $296 billion figure estimated by the Office of Management and Budget in July, and even lower than CBO's $260 billion estimate in August.

Thanks to a responsible budget blueprint and pro-growth policies, we're not only seeing the deficit fall, but also laying a solid foundation to meet our nation's immense future challenges. To ensure this trend of deficit reuction continues in the longer-term, we've got to remain diligent in our efforts to keep our economy strong and restrain federal spending.

Rep. Jim Nussle is Chairman of the House Budget Committee.

I think that our armed forces are doing a superb job in Afghanistan and Iraq and we must continue to support them. It’s been a year since Congress unanimously passed legislation honoring our troops, but now some Democrats apparently want to retreat on this issue. I sponsored the original legislation ensuring that our veterans are treated with honor and respect when they return home once their mission is complete. This measure was included in the 2006 Department of Defense Authorization bill. But now a year later, it’s surprising to me that some Democrats, who initially supported this amendment, seem hostile to the idea of publicly thanking our troops for their bravery upon their return home. The Democrats seem to have been for it before they were against it. Our troops deserve this type of honor and I am proud to support it.

My opponent, Sen. Burns, said Wednesday in Havre, MT that funding for adequate body armor for our troops on the front lines would "just bust the budget." Yet he still voted for a $20 million post-war party to commemorate "success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A new poll shows that American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are vastly under-equipped and overextended. A VoteVets Action Fund poll of 450 returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans showed that a clear majority feels the Army and Marines are overextended and nearly half said their equipment did not meet military standards. A recently released Pentagon study shows that better body armor could have saved 80 percent of the Marines in Iraq who died of wounds to the upper body.

According to the New York Times, tucked away in fine print in a military spending bill for this past year was $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007 as the money was obviously not spent this year.

Sen. Burns has no plan for success in Iraq and is opposed to funding body armor for our troops, yet he still finds time and money for party planning. That's just not right, especially when our country is at war with no plan and no exit strategy, and when U.S. troops are being sent to the front lines without the armor and equipment they need to be safe and successful.

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I have known Speaker Dennis Hastert for many years and in all that time I have known him to be a good and honorable man. It is unfortunate that the Foley situation has caused many to lose sight of the children that have been hurt by Foley’s actions. However, the information in this matter needs to come forth so that pages are protected and we don’t have to travel this path again.

Therefore, I fully support the call for an independent investigation of this incident. I have supported such an independent investigation from early on in this matter. As the past week has proven, political considerations currently weigh more than legal or ethical ones. That’s wrong. We need to remove the politics from the equation and get back to the point where we are simply doing what is right.

This would be a strong step in that direction and one that can’t happen soon enough.

One of the goals of having Hewlett-Packard officials testify before the Energy and Commerce Committee last week was to shed light on these types of sleazy practices. Those hearings should serve as a warning to other corporations that this type of misbehavior will not be tolerated and these new indictments of top Hewlett-Packard officials will certainly reinforce that message.

During that hearing I was struck by Patricia Dunn's lack of culpability in her admission that she had authorized these operations. She refused to take personal responsibility for her actions before the U.S. House but now she will be forced to take responsibility for them before the courts in California.

Last weekend, the Senate completed its work before the election recess after focusing for a month on national security legislation. I was pleased by what we accomplished, but there is still more we must do to keep America safe.

Passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 represents a victory for America and a failure for al-Qa'ida, allowing us to interrogate and prosecute enemy captives like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. These individuals possess vital information about the inner workings of terrorist networks, and our ability to extract that knowledge without exposing our intelligence capabilities has already prevented numerous attacks in the U.S. and abroad. Now that we've established appropriate legal proceedings with the force of law, we will be able to bringing terrorist detainees to justice.

We also approved legislation last week funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, strengthening our border defenses, enhancing security at our nation's ports and chemical plants, and revamping our nation's disaster response. In the face of a determined enemy, we must have the right priorities to keep Americans safe from attack, and the Republican Congress is meeting that challenge.

During this Congress, Democrats touted a security message of "tough and smart" polices for fighting terrorism, but their contradictory strategies for the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq are weak and wrong. Democrats fought to kill the Patriot Act, supported revealing vital national intelligence to terrorists, delayed the appointment of key officials to prosecute the war on terror, and advocated shutting down both the terrorism surveillance and terrorism financial tracking programs keeping America safe.  While I do not question anyone's patriotism, I question the judgment of those who would tie our hands in the face of an enemy bent on our destruction.

The American people will have a choice to make about whether we should give the President the tools necessary to fight and win the war on terror or abandon the mission and tie our hands - leaving behind a terror haven in Iraq and conceding victory to al-Qa'ida. I look forward to that debate.

Economic issues still have a big impact on elections and recent news has been good. We have got 18 quarters of growth, unemployment is down to 4.6 percent, gas prices are down, and the stock market is doing well. I think that is going to help the President’s numbers and it will certainly help Republicans.

The other driving issue that everyone is going to want to talk about is security -- border security, where immigration is concerned, and of course the situation in Iraq. So candidates just need to go home and talk about the work we have done that has affected national security, that has affected the economy and I think the voters are going to respond.