Senator Jon Tester was in Butte Thursday with a whole lot on his agenda.

Tester arrived at his office on Granite Street at 8 a.m. Thursday for a meeting with local representatives from eight unions across Montana. The hot topic was health care. The hot topic within that topic was to support or not support a public option. That was the question and this was part of the senator's answer.

“It has to be affordable for the country. It has to be affordable for us. It has to increase competition and what that means is I don’t want a public option to come in and blow everybody else out of the water so that's the only game in town either. I don't want to say, 'Well, you know, I'm flat for a public option because if it comes back and it doesn't work for Montana, now do I think there is a high percentage chance it will, yeah. But if it doesn’t, I want to leave that avenue open to say hold it, this doesn’t work for us,” Tester said.

Shortly after, Tester held a public forum at Butte's Holiday Inn Express to discuss his proposed Montana Forest Jobs Recreation Act.

In front of the 100 people in attendance, Tester used a Power-Point presentation to enforce his position on the bill, which he wrote with the help of Sun Mountain Lumber owner Sherm Anderson.

Because the bill will require annual timber harvesting, Anderson's logging industry would benefit greatly from the act. That timber would also help create biomass energy and opportunities for watersheds, according to Tester. But the senator still finds opposition from those who think they would give up too much in land usage rights granted by multiple use laws in Montana's forests.

“It's a situation where everybody gives a little and gets a lot. We've got a lot of federally forested land out there. There is room for everybody to play in it and everybody to win," Tester said.

"I don't feel that a new plan is necessary. The plan we have now is the plan that's working,” Butte resident Jack Jones said.

"I also really appreciate Sherm Anderson representing the timber companies who need to stay alive and they made a beautiful compromise in all of this,” Anaconda resident David Webb said.

"We're trying to reinvent the wheel and pick out two parts of multiple use and make trades with those two parts. I call it a 'Bad Horse Trade.' It's like trading Secretariat for a donkey," Jones said.

“Any piece of legislation that goes through Washington, D.C., the state level, too, as far as that goes, none of them are ever perfect. You don't agree with every single thing in them. That's the point here. There are certain things in here that are troubling to some of the folks in here. There are certain things that people like so they come and we'll be addressing some of those things after it comes out of Committee, assuming we get a committee hearing on it and that's what we're working on now,” Tester said.

Thursday was Tester's fifth public hearing on the act.

Click here to read the Forest Jobs Recreation Act.