{"id":1411,"date":"2021-04-29T07:47:50","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T14:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2021-04-29T07:47:50","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T14:47:50","slug":"killing-budgets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1411","title":{"rendered":"Killing Budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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During the four years I served on the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) I worked with many fellow members to craft budgets for where the state should spend the taxpayers\u2019 dollars. Most of the time, as a minority Democrat I was working with Republicans, since that\u2019s the main flavor in the Idaho Statehouse. But when considering how money should be spent, it really was about common sense, not political idealism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would get together and pore over the information and negotiate. Sometimes you could get something cut here, then someone would want to add something there and there would be honest negotiating. It was hard work but rewarding. We knew our job was not to make policy but balance the budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, when the Idaho House votes to kill budgets, I\u2019m scratching my head. Are they saying their colleagues on JFAC aren\u2019t doing their work? If so, they should be lobbying to get onto JFAC and do the work themselves. It\u2019s tough work, but not beyond their effort, I am sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or are they wanting this state agency to behave differently? If that is the case, they can write a law directing the agency with new policy and direction. I can see they are doing that with \u201cSocial Justice\u201d, \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d legislation. Read House Bill 377<\/a> please. The bill states it is a public policy that no public school shall:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cdirect or otherwise compel students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any of the following tenets\u2026\u201d I guess the legislature, and the Freedom Foundation don\u2019t trust our public-school teachers to behave professionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indoctrination is not education. Wayne Hoffman and Richard Butler both graduated from public schools and attended public colleges. Maybe that was before this \u201csocial justice\u201d threat. They both managed to grow up and think for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the \u201cNO\u201d voters just want this branch of government to go away. For the four years I built the Idaho Health and Welfare budgets, there would be 5-10 \u201cNO\u201d votes in the Senate, and 20-25 \u201cNO\u201d votes in the House. Nobody every spoke to me about the specifics of how this money should be spent differently. If there was any debate against the budget in the Senate, it was about \u201ctoo big\u201d or \u201cnot the role of government\u201d. Which again, could have been addressed with legislation to eliminate the Division of Welfare, or the Division of Medicaid, or any of the other parts of DHW.  But those bills never came up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A colleague explained it to me. Legislators get negative points on the Idaho Freedom Foundation Index<\/a> if they vote for a budget. And LOTS of negative points for voting for the Health and Welfare budgets. IFF keeps score. If you want a good Freedom Index score, vote the way they tell you to. I would argue the IFF is working hard to indoctrinate legislators. And they are doing a great job of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It looks like this session the IFF has put the bullseye on education funding, both higher ed and K12, with the social justice boogeyman as the excuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Idaho House killed a budget for K12 teacher pay. They also killed the higher ed budget. And the Federal Money from the Trump administration for preschool support got killed. Representative Shepherd (R-Riggins) said it clearly, when asked if he would support the Preschool grant. \u201cAnd if I cannot educate them (the voters) on what the bill actually does in time, at this point it\u2019s almost political suicide for me to support the bill.\u201d I guess he\u2019s not free to think for himself. He\u2019s watching his Freedom Index.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Promoting good schools is a noble cause. I just don\u2019t see the boogeyman the IFF has carted out for us. If Idaho legislators want to fight indoctrination, they should start thinking for themselves and not pandering to their Freedom Index.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the four years I served on the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) I worked with many fellow members to craft budgets for where the state should spend the taxpayers\u2019 dollars. Most of the time, as a minority Democrat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1413,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}