Press Releases

U.S. Congressman Ron Estes (R-Kansas), a member of the Western Congressional Caucus, joined Montana Talks with Aaron Flint to discuss the Caucus’s time in Montana, the secured provisions in the One Big, Beautiful Bill, the achievement of removing the lesser prairie-chicken from the Endangered Species Act, and more.

Read a transcript below. Listen to the interview here. 

On being in Montana with his colleagues from the Western Congressional Caucus:

“It was beautiful as we went up there yesterday … It was great being able to see the heights of the mountains and the depths of the valleys as you're going up. But also, I'm kind of an engineer by background, and so just seeing the striations in the rock layer and thinking about the geological impact of how that was created. It's interesting to watch and just a beautiful scenery to see.”

On how the creation of roads and transportation systems in the West:

“You think about how you maintain that and you think back about, you know, in the 1930s, when they were building the road is, how you ended up with the technology that was available at that point in time. Carrying dynamite in your backpack to get up to the places where you had to blast out rock to to be able to get to that. And then using the rock formation and making the arches for part of that section of the roadway so that they didn't have to blast too much of the mountain away in order to make that work.” 

On the purpose and intention of the Western Caucus:

“It's called the Western Caucus because really one of the primary goals is focusing on our public lands and how do we protect, preserve and make sure that we maintain those in an equitable manner to be able to use and be beneficial for Americans. 

“There's members from all across the country. So being able to be responsible and stewards of our public lands is so important. It's great to see that as you're here, see it in person and be able to partake in and experience it.”

On the geographical diversity of the Western Caucus membership:

“For me, from Kansas, we're kind of midwestern plains, depends on which definition you're using, but not only looking at our responsibility taking care of public lands, but also the Western Caucus, we look at . . . property rights, and the ability for us as Americans to own whatever it is, whether it's land, whether it's a house, whether it's a vehicle. 

“That's the base of being free is being able to have those property rights that you can understand and benefit from, and not have somebody at a whim because they have some political power, take that away from you. And so that's another reason why I joined the Western Caucus. 

“The other reason … endangered species are one of the things that we talk about in the caucus, and in Kansas we have some things like lesser prairie-chicken and a few other things that sometimes pop up. So obviously that's a concern as well as making sure that our EPA and Department of Interior and Fish and Wildlife are actually doing the things that they should be doing.”

On the tax provisions Congressman Estes secured in the One Big, Beautiful Bill:

“From a tax standpoint, we were facing a huge tax increase next year because of the temporary nature of some of the provisions that were put into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. So it depends on how your numbers are, different states would be differently affected, but it basically would have been … 22% tax increase for individuals. And in Kansas, in one year, that would have amounted to about $2,200. 

“. . .So obviously that has a huge impact on individuals and the way that they can run their lives whether they can buy the car or the truck that they need. We just couldn't allow that to happen. 

“Other provisions that actually we put in place in 2017 that actually made the economy take off. Whether it's being able to write off capital expenditure, so a business goes out and buys something, and they can be able to deduct that the first year, instead of spreading that out over five years. That provision expired, along with a provision that allowed research and development costs to be deducted the first year that they're incurred. What we saw when those provisions expired two years ago, was … a drop in investment and a corresponding drop in jobs and incomes.”

On eliminating the Death Tax in the One Big, Beautiful Bill:

“We want to make sure that families can pass it on. I mean, they're American citizens, whether they're in Kansas or Montana, or are the best stewards of the land and the best stewards of property. We want to make sure that they can pass that on to their heirs as well as, you know, the benefit that they obtained during their lifetime. 

“We were able to get some permanence in what the death tax exemption is, keep it at a high rate, and index it for inflation, so that it continues to go up as inflation costs show up. 

“We want to make sure that just the permanence aspect of so many things is going to help make a lot of those decisions better and easier for people to make and go out and make that investment in the sawmill because you know that, hey, this is going to be the tax code for the next several years and it's not a five-year provision that we have to look at.”

On the waste, fraud and abuse being exercised within the federal government:

“When you look at these other groups and, you know, the DOGE effort uncovered a lot of this in terms of just outright wasteful spending and fraud and abuse of the taxpayer dollars. We've been able to codify some of those things to help back up that executive order [from President Trump] and some of those things that come that have come out of the executive branch because, unless you don't put it in law, when one presidential administration changes, you can have a completely different direction in that.

“We need to make sure that we get more things put in law like, what's the process for taking something off of the endangered species list once they get off that place? What's the process of looking at, this is the land we own, but do we really need all of that? Maybe because there are better uses for that land.”