No, Kill Bill is not about the movie but about how our legislature is hamstrung by a group of committee chairmen who hijack good bills and make sure they are never voted on. This is nothing more than a legislative veto and should no longer be tolerated. This is not a one-off but a consistent drive by the current administration, lobbyists, and special interest groups to keep certain legislation they don’t want to see the light of day in the Committee Chairman’s desk drawer.
Legislative committee chairs are using their unchecked power as mini dictators to kill controversial legislation they don’t like behind closed doors or should we say behind the “CLOSED DESK DRAWERS”. It is time that we exposed why perfectly good legislation that has been proposed by many of our conservative legislators never gets a fair hearing. I’m sure it will not be a surprise to anyone who reads this newsletter that we have been talking about this for over a decade but it seems that nothing ever changes. So, who is responsible for appointing the heads of our various legislative committees? Truth be known it is not as democratic a process as you might think as our House Speaker Mike Moyle and Senate Pro Tempore Sen. Kelly Anthon have enormous influence as to who will chair the various committees. You can surmise they use this influence to suppress any bills that the administration or lobbyists don’t want to see passed.
We are all aware of the influence that lobbyists have on our representatives. If you ever go down to the State House you can’t help but to run into a bevy of these influencers parading around the halls pandering some unsuspecting legislator to sponsor a bill they want passed or trying to kill a bill they don’t want to pass. These are the larger lobby groups that are vying to influence our legislators. The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, the Idaho Medical Association, the Idaho Hospital Association and the Idaho Education Association. These lobbyists wine, dine and cajole our legislators to vote on the bills they want passed that will eventually become law. Now don’t think for a minute that any of these groups are looking to help the average Idaho taxpayer because that is not their job. No, their job is to find more ways to spend our tax dollars that will benefit them and their organizations. These are the same groups that will spend huge amounts of their members’ money to get those legislators elected so they will do their bidding. Which means they are essentially buying influence as to how our tax dollars are spent. This is why we see so many conservative bills die in some committee chairman’s desk drawer.
Here are just a few examples of the bills killed by these dictator chairmen who basically have the power to veto a bill just by not allowing their committee to vote on the issue or by keeping it from being introduced. These are a few of the bills that have been hijacked by these committee chairmen. The Patient Medical Rights Bill SB1022, Repeal of the Grocery Tax HB260, Reduction or Repeal of Medicaid Expansion HB138, Concealed Weapons on College Campuses SB108. Last but not least and I can’t for the life of me think why a supposedly conservative legislature like ours would not want to pass HB94 Citizen only Voting. The will of the people has been essentially silenced and representatives can no longer represent us, all because of a handful of anointed lawmakers (committee chairs) who think they know better than most everyone else.
Committee chairs are arbitrarily deciding what is best for Idahoans. Why is it that we permit these few legislators to have the power to go against the will of the people. Let’s take the Grocery Tax which is the most onerous tax you can put on people especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder. We have a super majority of lawmakers who support repeal of this tax and eighty-seven percent of Idahoans who want it to be repealed yet they will not let it come up for a vote. Please keep in mind that there are only two committee chairs and two legislative leaders who oppose getting rid of this onerous grocery tax.
Let’s be honest big business and lobbyists have been running our legislature for decades. Until we root out the moldy legislatures who do the bidding of these powerful lobbyists associations we do not have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have a government of the lobbyists by the lobbyists and for the lobbyists. If Idaho’s voters do not change this dynamic, we will be woke, broke and choked to death with higher budgets every year by these organizations who now appear to be Idaho’s de-facto government. Idaho is on the wrong track and until we get a governor and legislators who care more about the people than the lobbyists we will continue down this road to perdition.
I have lived in five different states in my lifetime. New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin, Colorado and Idaho and if you take a good look you will find the first four are now all blue which is why I moved to Idaho 31 years ago. Unfortunately, the Gem State is heading in that same direction unless we change it. Please don’t take any comfort in the fact that we have a governor who voted to stop abortions, end men in girls’ sports and signed a $50 million school choice bill. These were all gestures to preserve the perception that he is a conservative. Governor Little reveled in the fact that our President Donald Trump gave him accolades for this school choice bill when it was a mere drop in the bucket within our education budget that should hit 4 billion dollars this year. I ask you to remember who President Trump endorsed in the last gubernatorial election and it was not our current governor Brad Little it was Janice McGeachin. The big question next year will be do we have a conservative candidate that can beat Brad Little and if so will they step forward and save our state.
Thomas Jefferson wisely said, “A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.” Or, as he also put it, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Where do you stand?
“We Get the Government We Deserve“.
6 replies on ““Kill Bill””
Bob; We, the Concerned Citizens of Canyon County, have tried for years to get the chairman of a committee to listen to the people instead of the Chair. We have multiple times stated that due to this situation the Idaho voter is not represented by the Legislature. The change we requested was to empty the chairman’s desk once a week and have the entire committee vote on hearing each bill. “Right” we never got a response. You can be as polite as you want, but the fact of the matter is that the citizen of Idaho is not represented by their representatives as the chairmen of the committees are controlled by the Speaker and the Pro- tem. The fair property tax issue, school taxes, and grocery tax would have been corrected years ago if we could have gotten bills out of their desks.. Ron Harriman Ex Chairman of the Concerned Citizens of Canyon County.
There is no doubt that all the Democrats moving to Idaho, don’t seem to leave their bad ideas behind. They’ve ruined so many great states, and continue to try and do the same to Idaho, we’re tired of it, and we the people need to get Idaho back to the people.
Idaho needs to rid itself of RINO’s and Dems in our government. Gov Little is infatuated with fed $. If a polys loyalty doesn’t support an America First agenda, I consider them an enemy.
they are and in serious need of being primaried. I am stunned by the number of elected officials, right down to the county level, that show us consistently that they are RINO’s.
It IS true that a lot of chairmen hold bills, some for legitimate reasons, some for politics. I have known some previous Chairmen who did NOT hold bills (although they were accused of doing so by those who KNEW the truth). I have researched reports of bills being held which were UNTRUE. There ARE some bills that are DESIGNED to NOT make it through committee. There ARE bills that are introduced to simply begin discussions since the idea has to be floated around for a while to convince other legislators to get on board. There ARE bills that are so flawed once the Chair looks at them that they are sent back to the legislator for revision (still given a number so they look like they are being “held” when in fact they get re-introduced with a new number once fixed). One Chair I knew rejected ANY bill presented by a government agency WITHOUT a legislative sponsor because he believed that if a legislator would not sponsor it, it should not go through because the legislature is there to serve the people, not a government agency. Personal bills are NOT expected to make it through committee and are mostly used for political purposes (I had a deeply conservative legislator admit this to me). So, first, it helps to understand the various reasons a bill might LOOK like it is being “held”. KNOWLEDGE and TRUTH are a might tool. As far as the Chairmen go, I would suggest that the Legislature develop a rotating system. Since the committees are chosen for a two-year stint, perhaps the Chair could rotate each year and be picked at random from the majority party members of the committees. At least there would be SOME change. But that would mean that the Legislature would have to change the rules for such things and we do know that in this case they truly prefer the status quo.
Sheese! Will this never end.? We are the people! The legislature is ignoring what the people want.