Idaho Gov. Brad Little gives his annual State of the State address on Jan. 6, 2025, on the House floor at the Statehouse in Boise. (Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
Your budget reflects your values. It’s that simple. You fix the dishwasher or you cancel your Hulu subscription.
Our Idaho Legislature is giving us, the voters who elected them, a clear picture of their values. I ask, and you should be too, does this reflect my values?
The Idaho Legislature is considering a proposal to fund tax credits for families who send their kids to private schools or do home schooling. This modest proposal will only cost us taxpayers about $50 million if our governor will stick to his guns. Of course, that’s just in the first year. Arizona saw a similar tax credit blow up to large multiples of this, but we can trust our legislators to keep a close eye on our tax dollars, can’t we? So, we won’t worry about the future right now. Though, of course, any healthy budget should.
Along these lines, our legislators have kept a close eye on the Medicaid expansion dollars. The cost to Idaho taxpayers has now come to about $100 million. Many prominent legislators think this is too much.
So now we are talking about budgets. We have to get into numbers, arithmetic. I apologize right here. I know you would rather debate principles, ideals, morals, ideology, but that’s where we are headed, if you can put up with some numbers. Stay with me.
A $50 million investment in home school and private school money for Idahoans might seem prudent to legislators right now. They have been hearing a lot from the big bucks behind this.
If the proposal caps the benefit at $5,000 per family earning less than $100,000, that means 10,000 families in Idaho might get some of your taxpayer money to support their kids in some private, maybe religious, maybe alternative school that isn’t held to public school standards.
Write those numbers down.
At the same time, our legislators have decided health insurance for the working poor is too expensive. We can’t afford to pay $100 million to get health insurance for 90,000 families in Idaho that would not be eligible for any health insurance coverage.
Write those numbers down.
Our legislators are considering cutting off health care coverage for nine times as many people as they want to support to send their kids to private schools, because it costs too much.
This is a fundamental budget and value proposition.
Don’t get me started on the Idaho tax cuts House Speaker Mike Moyle suggests. Idaho has seen incredible population and thus revenue growth. But the downturn is coming. We should plan for it. Our reserves will not suffice.
Some might argue that Idaho dropping Medicaid expansion coverage will help our federal partners with our deficit conundrum. Idaho’s U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo sat on the Simpson/Bowles Commission that offered wise deficit reduction recommendations. States dropping Medicaid was not among them. This is a straw man argument.
There is no doubt health care costs and profiteering are crippling our country. I have long advocated for reforms. But for the Idaho Legislature to now hold these two balls in their hands, weighing them, should make you think about your values.
Sending our tax monies to 10,000 families that choose to opt out of public education might make sense if you frame it around the marketplace, competition, choice, entrepreneurial capitalism, and such. So, we drop a $50 million dime of Idaho taxpayer money in that ideological direction.
But then, at the same time we take away health care coverage from nine times as many Idahoans because we can’t afford to pay twice what such a voucher benefit would cost?
This is bad math.
It’s about budgeting. It’s about values.
Please consider your values. I value education. I value health care. I don’t think our Idaho Legislature has these values. I would hope you do.
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