Governor Otter and his cronies are playing the same tune on SB1067 as they have played on each and every bill that the governor and his corporate, lobbyist’s friends want to get passed. The name of that tune is “Show Me the Money.” For the past week the Governor and leadership have been twisting arms and pulling ears to get enough votes to pass this abomination of federally extorted legislation. It does not matter to him or the leaders of our legislature if they toss our sovereignty out the window since they really don’t care if Idaho is a sovereign state or not. All they care about is the money they get from the federal government because they are incapable of building Idaho’s economy by growing it. It’s much easier to take money from the feds than to actually work for it.
Dick Armstrong and the Department of Health and Welfare have been feeding the liberal news media with boloney numbers about how much money our state will lose if this bill is not passed. It started with $16 million then went to $16 plus $30 million, then we heard it was $200 million and the latest number is $300 million. Can you imagine how bad the accounting in our state government is that they don’t even know how much not passing this bill will cost the state? But then again look at the over $90 plus million and counting we have lost in the wifi school contract, prison contract and schoolnet contract. By now we should be used to hearing anything but the truth when it comes to what happens in government
The facts are that the federal government would not take any money away as they know very well that this would be brought into court, they would be sued and the state would win the case. As Representative Ron Nate articulated so well in his interview with Kevin Miller. “This is a problem with the federal government threatening states to get what they want and actually there’s a lot of legal precedence on this. It is illegal for the federal government to impose penalties or make threats to states in order to get them to enact legislation that they want. (1992 N.Y. vs the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal government cannot use threats to get states to enact legislation). In a similar ruling NFIB v. Sebelius which dealt with the federal government forcing states to accept Medicaid expansion by withholding Medicaid money.
This problem comes down to the fact that our Washington bureaucrats signed onto a treaty without reading it or understanding its ramifications when it comes to foreign law being imposed on U.S. citizens. We can thank Senator Crapo, Senator Risch, Congressman Labrador and Congressman Simpson for getting us into this mess.
We unfortunately are connected to a federally run program which is responsible for legally going after deadbeat fathers for child support. If we don’t sign onto this bill, the federal government has threatened to cut Idaho from this program which would leave us with little or no mechanism to recover child support from parents who live outside our state. If they can’t extort us one way, they will always find another which is one more reason we need to get away from federal intrusion into the way we run our state.
Our state has been put in a pickle because of our four Washington delegates Crapo, Risch, Labrador and Simpson who didn’t bother to thoroughly read this treaty before voting on it. If it were not for the nine members of the House Judiciary Committee actually reading this legislation, this bill would have been rubber stamped as it was in our Senate, and no one would have been the wiser until the first legal case was brought to a foreign court. Idaho should be pleased and proud to have these nine legislators looking out for the interest of our State.
This Bill SB1067 is currently in some sort of amendment process to make it possible to pass this legislation with as little damage as possible, but it will be no thanks to the many critics like Representative McCrostie and Representative Anderst in Sunday’s Idaho Statesman. I would suggest that both of these gentlemen who live in glass houses should stop throwing stones.
We’ve been told that the way this treaty was written, regardless of what amendments are made we may only be able to mitigate the data portion, but not the legal due process part of this bill. Anytime our states are subjugated to the laws, tribunals or courts of a foreign government we are relinquishing our rights as sovereign states, and this needs to stop. Want to blame someone for this problem, call your Washington delegates, let them know how upset you are. Tell them to start reading all legislation before they vote on it. After all
“WORDS DO MEAN SOMETHING”
