Over the past week, we have had a lot of talk about our DOGE Governor Little with his signing of the School Choice Bill that will give 10,000 students out of over 300,000 the ability to chose the school they want to attend. This amounts to $50 million which is such a miniscule amount when we look at what Idaho spends on K-12 education. It’s time the people of Idaho figured out that there is a lot more BS coming out of our state house than meets the eye. We took some time to study the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s “PORK REPORT” which you can find by clicking here: https://idahofreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-IFF-Pork-Report.pdf it tells a much different story about Governor Little’s idea of DOGE.
Let’s start with The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare who was a key sponsor of the Boise Pride festival contributing $20,000 of our tax dollars under the guise of under “Project Filter” a smoking cessation program. This was before the legislature banned this program. The Arts Commission, which probably shouldn’t exist, has a $2.2 million budget. They were a key sponsor for the first Bonners Ferry Pride Festival, put on by the North Idaho Pride Alliance.
We are all aware that we need to do something to reduce drug use in our state. Does anyone think that having the Dept. of Health and Welfare spend $15 million over the last two years to advertise against substance abuse was going to convince a drug user too quit? The Pork Report also found that The Idaho State Police spent more than half a million dollars over the past two years promoting “fentanyl awareness”. Like we don’t hear this from some news media on a daily basis. This begs the question does anyone know how much Idaho Government spends on advertising each year? But the drug abuse program doesn’t end there. In 2023 we spent $11 million on a needle exchange program. When the Legislature ended these grants, other funding came through hepatitis and HIV mitigation plans but these plans were not at all effective and was ended in 2024. More of our tax money up in smoke.
Talk about wasteful and inappropriate spending you need to look at a $1 million dollar mail sorter acquired with federal covid funds. These funds came through The American Rescue Plan Act. These funds were supposed to be used to address funding shortfalls imposed by pandemic policies. In 2025 Idaho’s Dept. of Finance was allocated $55,000 to purchase 25 new laptop computers and of course they purchased the most expensive models allowed at $2,200 a copy. Let us not forget the legislature’s appropriation of $937,600 over the last five fiscal years—$166,300 this year alone—to relocate and remodel liquor stores throughout the state. Now granted much of that money comes from liquor sales but it is also money that could have gone back into the state’s coffers. Liquor can only be sold in Idaho by state authorized stores giving them a monopoly so why do we keep spending money on renovations for these stores. Oh well it’s just another Million here and a Million there.
We have another agency amongst the 189 in our state government that is inappropriate and I believe we could probably do without it is the STEM Action Center whose purpose is to garner interest among children in fields focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The agency costs taxpayers $6,184,100 annually to “produce a competitive STEM-ready workforce.”. Excuse me but isn’t this ultimately the goal of School choice. The Legislature moved $40,000 from the agency to the Library Commission to salvage a STEM program that was going to be discontinued. But that’s not the worst of our education spending to encourage a particular workforce. In 2023 against objections from conservative legislators the Idaho Launch Program was initiated. This was nothing more than central planning for an Idaho workforce but the kicker is that this program costs the taxpayers $71 million dollars. The Workforce Development Council is used to drive students into what the government deems to be “in-demand” careers. Does this sound a bit like socialism to anyone. Why is taxpayer money being used to train students for jobs when industries who hire these students should be paying for their training. Established in 2017, the Council is made up of 37 Governor appointed members from throughout the state, including 17 Idaho employers, 10 state government representatives, 7 workforce representatives, and a member from each chamber. So, it is the employers who reap the benefits of this program at taxpayer expense. Some would say they get the gold mine and the taxpayers get the shaft.
While I’m on the subject of Gold Mines let us not forget this beauty. The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has been managing an old mine in North Idaho for some time now. The Bunker Hill cleanup project is a long-term project that is less of a mine and more of a money pit as of late. The project already received $1.5 million and another $13.7 million in COVID funding from the American Rescue Plan Act in the 2023 fiscal year. Then, the department asked for another $1.1 million in the 2025 fiscal year to mitigate the rising costs of inflation. Ironically, the ARPA money they took for this project is one of the largest contributors to the high inflation we have experienced. The $1.1 million is actually a 40% increase for the project this year, well beyond what would be warranted by the federal government’s inflation problem.
Folks I could go on and on as this Pork Report is 41 pages long and has a cacophony of taxpayer financed programs that are not only wasteful but inappropriate for government to be involved in. If you take the time to read this entire report you will see quite clearly that Idaho is not what you would call a DOGE state. I draw your attention once again to the fact that we get 40 plus percent of our state budget from the Federal Government and our budget has increased by 55% in the past 5 years and doubled in the past 9 years. For all the BS our governor has been spreading to the press about Idaho being DOGE before it existed once you read this report you will see that this is nothing more than a big fat lie. Please take the time to read this report it will enlighten you to no end.
You will find the report here: https://idahofreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-IFF-Pork-Report.pdf
“We Get the Government We Deserve.”
2 replies on “Idaho was DOGE before DOGE existed?”
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You’re correct. The fox cannot evaluate the henhouse. But, and this is a serious “BUT”, where to go to find someone actually competent in providing an analysis without inserting their own personal ideology? That’s problematic, to me anyway. Very early on in my term of elected office, I asked someone who claimed to be able to do just that, to take a look at my numbers and budgets at ACHD as he’d told me that ACHD had a bloated overhead by at least 20%. He hemmed and hawed around for about 6 months, couldn’t come up with anything that HE wanted to see, so I withdrew my question. At a later date, after much time and scrutiny, I determined myself that I’d been lied to in that particular regard. I’ve said no to a lot of budget items, asked for others to be considered that were much less expensive and, to me, a more efficient use of money to accomplish the same purpose, to no avail. Why? Because of competing ideologies and partisan sound byte decision making processes. It’s really pathetic.