While I have a lot of respect for Idaho’s new House Speaker Mike Moyle, there are better qualified members of the House who could have filled that position. All you need to do is see how he has organized the House committees to make sure he has complete control of what bills get passed and which ones get killed. I have known Mike for many years and have actually stood with him in front of a senate committee to argue the reasons that the grocery tax should be eliminated. That was many years ago and as you all know, elimination of the grocery tax has been killed several times in the senate.
Idahoans are still paying this regressive tax because the IACI lobbyists want it to remain regardless of who it is hurting. While I consider Mike a conservative, he has become much more borderline and only obtained a score of 70 which barely keeps him just barely in the conservative category in the Idaho Freedom Foundation Freedom Index in 2022.
Mike has held office as a representative for over 20 years and has been sitting on the political fence for about the same amount of time. What do I mean by that? Mike plays both sides of the aisle, and I don’t mean Democrat vs Republican I mean Establishment RINO vs Conservative.
Mike is the kind of guy who is hard to dislike as he wants to be everybody’s friend and you can be sure that is why he is our new House Speaker today. We will have to wait to see if he can be a friend to the people he serves over the next two years; however, that will depend on how well-balanced he is on that fence he has built in our legislature. One thing I can say about Mike is he will be better than that Circus Clown Scott Bedke whose only goal has been to help himself at the expense of the Idahoans he is supposed to represent. Bedke has a huge ego, and his goal has always been to be elected Governor. You can bet he will run in 2026 when Little abdicates the throne, but I don’t expect him to win. If for some unknown reason he does, it will be time to find greener pastures for this publisher.
Mike Moyle’s current display of gerrymandering the committee positions in the House has done nothing to make it more conservative and in fact, has diluted any chance of conservatives controlling any committees except the State Affairs Committee. Mike has once again proven how much of a fence sitter he is with a definite bias to the left. This is clearly shown by his selective appointments of House members to the various committees keeping them as natural as possible. The way the distribution looks now the establishment RINOs will have the upper hand in the all-important JFAC committee, which is the one where all the appropriations come out of.
While a few more true conservatives have been added it is still more left-leaning than previously. As my associate Dr. Livingston has said in his writing, the Senate is more conservative this session than in recent history with the exception that Chuck Winder, a committed RINO, is in charge. Chuckey has distributed the newest conservatives in such a way that the Senate will still have the ability to hold up bills approved by the House but not approved by IACI or the Governor.
So, what will the new legislature look like? Establishment Republicans (RINOs) will still control the legislature and will be able to kill any new bills that might prove to be too conservative for the WOKE members of IACI or for our left-leaning Governor Little to sign. Unless a bill is approved by the establishment legislators and the lobbyists that pay to keep them in office, I don’t believe you will see any real conservative legislation passed in 2023 or 2024.
Mike Moyle and Chuckey Winder have done a great job of erecting a proper fence in both houses that they can sit on comfortably and have complete control over all new legislation. As my friend John Livingston says, this will keep the status quo in both houses of our legislature for the next two years. I would expect our state budget to continue to expand with less accountability and I would not expect any new tax rebates to be issued as the Governor has sequestered four more years to screw with Idaho’s taxpayers.
One thing you can be sure of is that Idaho will not be spared from the current recession and things will get a lot worse before they get better. This is Governor Little’s last term in office, so he doesn’t have any reason to placate the people he serves, so we will continue to see the administration favor big business while many small businesses will struggle. Little will continue to take his marching orders from IACI and don’t expect any real tax breaks to help put food on your tables or gas in your cars.
“WE GET THE GOVERNMENT WE DESERVE”
