Idaho Chooses Life

As the nation engages in an unprecedented discussion about fiscal disaster and spending priorities, Planned Parenthood is front and center.

How much of our national treasure should be devoted to destroying our very future?

The House of Representatives provided rational leadership by asserting that funding Planned Parenthood is not only an expense we can’t afford – it is practical insanity to do so. For the first time in many years, the Conservative Majority has asserted crucial moral values into the nation’s fiscal debate.

Planned Parenthood has responded to this dire threat by staging a powerful and expensive public relations effort. Like any evil enterprise, its immediate goal is to obscure its mission and hide its ugly truths behind bumper stickers and slogans.

We urge pro-Lifers to arm themselves with the facts by reading a powerful article now running on the National Review: Five Truths About Planned Parenthood.

Please join us in praying for those courageous members of Congress who are fighting to end our unwanted partnership with Planned Parenthood.

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to describe the 2011 session of the legislature. I have decided to leave the discussion of how well we did to others, and I know you will be hearing plenty of negative comments and self praise from those directly involved. I’ll try to stay away from that.

It was the most difficult session of all the time I have observed there. To say that there was a lot that went on behind the scenes would be an understatement. It’s hard to describe the new process of legislating in Idaho. Part of that has come because of the culture change that has occurred because of the renovating of the capital. We used to run across each other quite frequently and now in order to talk to someone you have to search hard to find them. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad but I can tell you that it has changed the way we deal with each other and how we talk about the issues.

We passed a lot of legislation, some good and some not so good. The variety of topics is the largest I remember and those matters were more difficult to deal with than ever before. The numbers of people coming to the capital was remarkable. It seemed more like a pressure cooker at times than an honest discussion of the issues. It was a time of attempted political maneuvering coupled with parliamentary wrangling. The last two weeks of any session are tense but these last two weeks are sure to go down as a record for rancor. Most of the time we are able to overcome some of the problems in the place with a little bit of humor, in an effort to not take ourselves quite so seriously. During the final meeting in State Affairs the other day in an effort to lighten the mood a bit I made a comment that didn’t receive even a smile from anyone in attendance. Smiles were hard to come by at the end of this session.

You may ask, what took so much time? Here’s a short list of the things we talked about: Primary election law, video services act, horseracing, conscience law, fetal pain, concealed weapons, nullification of national health care, legislative legal services, wind moratorium, wind siting, just to name a few. And that’s just a partial list of the matters we dealt with in the State Affairs Committee in the House.

Then there was Health and Welfare with the most prominent topic there being Medicaid reworking and how services will be delivered in the future. Also in Health and Welfare a two-day discussion took place on medical marijuana. Then, there was education with a multitude of bills, the effect of which will not be known for quite some time. I don’t want to leave out all of the talk surrounding a potential cigarette tax increase, wind turbine sales tax rebate, or the taxing of Internet sales.

Now that it’s over my Duramax will get a little rest, with emphasis on little. Sitting on the house floor the last day of the session I composed this little ditty as a very brief synopsis of the session.

As Sessions Come, Sessions Go

We came to the capital with a flurry of snow
With hopes that debate would warm winter air.
Though the heat came about as the winds of time blow,
In spite of Spring coming the weather’s not fair.

So now the time comes for the process to end
And we get back to things of tractor, rake and a hoe.
The weather outside has not made much of a bend
And it looks like we’ll get home with a flurry of snow.

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

Late one afternoon during the week several of us in the House were sitting around the desk of Representative Bateman from Idaho Falls. He was in the House long ago and has come back this year after a 20+ year absence. He was reminiscing over some of the crazy things they used to do in the House. Some things may not have been crazy but the parliamentary maneuvering in those days seemed to be quite different than it is now. He told us about some of the old-timers who really knew the process and how it worked best.

One of the things that has been used effectively over time is reading the bills at length on the House floor. Starting on Wednesday the minority party decided to have us read bills because of a couple of issues that they want to have discussed around this place. Neither of the measures that they seek have enough votes to come out of committee. We read a lot of bills the last three days of the week but one of them was of particular interest. The bill was one updating some provisions of the sex offender law. I was talking to one of the attorneys around here about the sad nature of having such graphic terms in state law. The bill is about 28 pages long and the reading of all those terms being broadcast over the Internet did not seem appropriate. One gentleman of the majority party finally stood and pleaded with the minority to stop sending all that kind of language out over the airwaves. They finally relented.

In spite of reading bills we made some fairly good progress in clearing off our third reading calendar in the House. It took some long days to accomplish. Another bill that was read at length on the floor was the third piece of the education “reform” effort. I studied the matter at length and there are several things in the bill that I don’t like. The most glaring problem that I see in the legislation is that the money for “mobile computing devices” comes from the top of the appropriation for schools. Another part of that formula would be taking the merit pay for teachers off the top as well. What that means is that after those things are taken out of the budget to begin with, only what is left can be used by the school districts at their discretion.

Some districts, like Westside School District, who have already made great strides in using technology in the classroom could be penalized. If I read the legislation correctly, if they are unable to utilize the funding for things that they already have in place, they would lose those funds. The school districts like to call that the use it or lose it method. There are so many other things that come from the top of the appropriation that I think it punishes those districts who have already used their initiative in developing technological advances in their classrooms. I voted no. Representative Bateman gave the best debate of the day. He said that the use of technology in the classroom was already well underway in Idaho. “You can’t stop the advance of technology in the classroom anymore than you can use a pitchfork to stop the tides of the ocean,” is how he put it.

We still have a few budget bills left to pass and some other issues that remain bottled up in one place or another in the process. But if all goes well this could be our last week for this session. That of course is assuming that we don’t get any of those 50 page bills to read at length in the House. At least we’re getting in some reading practice.

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By Richard Larsen

James Madison, the “Father” of the Constitution, said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” His statement seems prophetic when we assess the encroachment on our individual liberty by what we could broadly classify as “well-intentioned” government officials.

This gradual elimination of personal choice and liberty, as well as our concomitant individual accountability, was partially delineated last week in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency at the Energy Department was testifying to the committee when Senator Rand Paul inquired, “I was wondering if you’re pro-choice.” Hogan responded, “I’m pro-choice of (light) bulbs.”

The Senator responded, “Well, actually, that’s the point. The point is that most members of your administration probably would be frank and would be up front to characterize themselves as being pro-choice for abortion. But you’re really anti-choice on every other consumer item that you’ve listed here. Including light bulbs, refrigerators, toilets, you name it, you can’t go around your house without being told what to buy. You restrict my choices, you don’t care about my choices.”

“You raise the cost of all the items with your rules, all your notions that you know what’s best for me. Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do. You restrict my choices. There is hypocrisy that goes on when people claim to believe in some choices but don’t want to let the consumer decide what they can buy and put in their houses. I find it insulting.

“I wish you would come here to extol me…to try to convince me to conserve energy. But you come instead with fines, threats of jail. You put people out of business who want to make products you don’t like. This is what your energy efficiency standards are.

“I find it really appalling and hypocritical and think there should be some self-examination from the administration on the idea that you favor a woman’s right to an abortion but you don’t favor a woman or a man’s right to choose what kind of light bulb, what kind of dishwasher, what kind of washing machine.

“I really find it troubling, this busybody nature that you want to come into my house, my bathroom, my bedroom, my kitchen, my laundry room. I just really find it insulting and I find that all of the arguments for energy efficiency you’re exactly right we should conserve energy – but why not do it in a voluntary way? Why do it where you threaten to fine me or put me in jail if I don’t accept your opinion. In America we believe in trying to convince our neighbors and but not trying to convince them through the force of law. I find this antithetical to the American way.”

The dichotomy presented by the Senator is significant: the freedom to choose to end a life while in the womb is sacrosanct while the freedom to choose what kind of light bulbs to use is trumped by government mandates. It’s okay to kill an unborn child but heaven forbid that we choose to use a 100 watt light bulb instead of a 95 watt bulb. This is not only inane and sheer lunacy, but it, pardon the pun, illuminates the morally bankrupt status of our steadily growing “nanny state.”

Someone once said, “Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.” And Louis Brandeis declared, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Yet that is precisely what is happening as government mandates reduced freedom and choice in health care, health care insurance, energy consumption, use of salt and trans-fats in food preparation, proscribing the proliferation of fast-food restaurants, disallowing the distribution of toys with children’s meals, and dictating standards for appliances, toilets, and light bulbs. With every government statute and mandate, individual freedom is sacrificed anew.

Freedom is usually characterized as something fought for against tyrannical ideologies and totalitarian regimes. We arguably have a totalitarian state emerging right before our eyes where our individual freedom is steadily eroded by self-supposed elitists who think they’re better equipped to make all of our decisions for us.

There is a moral imperative to freedom that allows us individually to make decisions and to be accountable for the consequences of those decisions. Perhaps it’s time to introspectively assess if we’re still the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” or if we are now the land of the oppressed and the home of the nanny state.

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Idaho Chooses Life

The House State Affairs Committee took decisive action on Wednesday morning to prevent abuse of a state law restricting tax funded abortions.

In 2001, the Legislature enacted the Davis/Loertscher Amendment to restrict Medicaid abortion to those involving a threat to the mother’s life or in cases of rape or incest. However, in 2007 the Department of Health & Welfare maneuvered a rule change will basically created an exception that ate the law:

The way we read their rules implementing the 2001 law, any teenage girl in Idaho would be eligible to have a “free” abortion so long as she could prove that she was 18 or younger at the time the baby was conceived. That rule certainly violates the intent of the key law. But it also compromises the spirit of Idaho’s Parental Consent Law.

Fortunately Health & Welfare Chairman Janice McGeachin and members of the State Affairs Committee have ridden to the rescue of taxpayers and these girls – so susceptible under H&W rules to manipulation by Planned Parenthood & Co. And fortunately Idaho allows for the Legislature to override agency rules which violate the intent of statute.

The House Concurrent Resolution was sent directly to the House floor – which greatly increases the odds that we can get this abusive rule stripped from the playbook before the end of this legislative session.

This may well be the important pro-Life issue of the session. The latest figures available indicate that there are about 300 abortions done in Idaho on girls under 18. No doubt many of those were the direct result of this back-door funding scheme, by which Planned Parenthood could offer troubled girls a “free” abortion to solve all their problems.

As important as the abuse of tax dollars is in this matter – witness the wrenching stories of families impacted by proposed cuts in Medicaid dollars – the most important element of this outrageous rule is the implied sanction of abortion as a morally acceptable choice for girls in crisis. After all – if the taxpayers of Idaho are willing to pay for it, it must be right – right?

We ask for your prayer support as we work to ensure this rule rejection is adopted by the full House and then in the Senate.

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By Representative Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

The other night I decided it was time get a haircut. As it usually happens a conversation breaks out between the haircutter and the client. Noticing that I was from out of town, she asked where I was from. I told her that I was from Eastern Idaho and she told me that she had never been east of Pocatello. She then asked me what brought me to Boise. I said, “Oh, I am one of those people that you may love to hate.” She then asked, “Are you a senator?”

The preliminary revenue numbers for January are in and they indicate that we are up slightly from our projection at the end of last session. Even though that is the case there are still some fairly large holes in our budget. The budget still seems to dominate our conversation. The Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee is seeking input from the various committees about the department budgets. It’s interesting that even during these tight economic times some of the departments continue to ask for increases and new line
items in their budgets. To the governor’s credit he has eliminated most of those line items in his budget request to the legislature.

There have been a couple of controversial bills introduced in the State Affairs Committee. One is known as the Nullification Bill and the other is the Telecommunications Bill. We are anticipating a very large crowd to come on Wednesday for the Nullification Bill and are making preparations for the hearing to be held in the auditorium on the Senate side of the capital. Some are concerned that our taking action of this kind, especially after our court case about national health care legislation was declared to be completely unconstitutional, could be detrimental to our case. And as usual we are hearing from attorneys on both sides of this issue, one of them being the state Attorney General. It will be extremely interesting to see what the hearing provides in the way of good solid information for the committee.

As for telecommunications, that is a very long ongoing discussion that has been going on for several years between the various telecom companies and the cities. Some of the companies want us to change the law so that there is a statewide franchising system which would only require them to have to negotiate one contract for the whole state. As you can imagine our e-mail boxes have been filling up with comments from several of the cities. I think the members of the committee are taking a wait and see approach to see if some of the differences can be ironed out between the various parties concerned.

It seems that around here, as it is down on the farm, that sometimes the simple stuff is overlooked on the way to the solution to problems. The heater in the Suburban went on the blink and that was my weekend project. We tried everything, replacing the controls, tearing out the dash and checking the fan motor, checking all electrical connections and checking all the relays. It turned out to be a simple ground wire fault. Something so simple but so time consuming to solve. This may not be exactly how it works around here, but I have to think that there mig

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By Representative Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

During the Revolutionary war, Thomas Paine wrote a series of articles entitled The Crisis. He wrote, “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” While the crisis that we are facing at this present time may not be anything like the Revolutionary war, the times definitely are a challenge.

We keep looking for some good news as it pertains to our budget and revenue and at the close of this last week we just don’t seem to be able to find the good news we’re looking for. The revenue numbers for January will soon be in and we will know better how the economy in Idaho is performing. Everyone around here is crossing their fingers for a positive result.

I don’t recall a time when we have had more hearings into budget matters then we have had this year. It seems that the various committees of the legislature are more engaged in looking at how the budget might be put together. The House Health and Welfare Committee invited several provider groups to speak to the committee about how to save money in the Medicaid program. Due to a previous commitment, I was unable to attend the meeting but it was recorded and I listened to it while driving home. It was interesting to hear the comments from many providers and how they see Medicaid from their point of view. It ended on the note that they committed to working with us and all concerned to find savings. The most frequent comment in the meeting was to hear each one explain how important their particular program is. That’s not new, but what is new is that they have committed to help.

The pace of the session has picked up with several new pieces of legislation being introduced. I don’t know how we compare to other sessions at this point, but it seems like the load is quite heavy already. I know what you’re thinking, just what we need, more laws. I had one legislator approach me the other day and tell me that he had a good one-liner, “Section such and such is hereby repealed.” My reply? “Go for it!” That’s a little bit of music for my ears.

With the pressure that has been building around the capital, it was good to get home over the weekend, get a little sunshine, and get a change of pace. I don’t know what other legislators do on weekends, but I do know that being home down on the farm is quite therapeutic for me. I got a chance to look through the cattle, check out the snowpack, do a little repair work on the house and sleep in until 6 AM. Then I turned on the news to see all the unrest in the world. That put an abrupt end to a restful weekend.

Whether or not you call what we are experiencing a crisis or not, the matter is serious. The latest projections are that we may be $185 million short to cover 2011 and 2012. We definitely have our work cut out for us. Last summer I attended a meeting where the speaker told us that the most unfortunate thing about these times is that the words million, billion and trillion all sound the same. How on earth did we get here? That’s a subject for another discussion.

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

It’s always a bit tricky to put a budget together. Even down on the farm that’s the case and it’s no different around this place. One of the problems we as humans have is that we tend to think that income sources will be flat over time, or even increasing slightly. When we get good prices for our commodities on the farm we tend to assume that those revenues will stay up for the foreseeable future. That is rarely the case and in government things don’t seem to be any different. We have made a lot of assumptions in our revenue projections for the coming year that will have to come to pass in order for our budget to be balanced.

The budget still seems to be the big item of discussion around the legislature. Some around here are saying that we have made history this year already in that the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee has been inviting other germane committees to sit with them as the budgets from the agencies are discussed. This definitely is a first and I think it is been helpful for members of the various committees to get a feel of how the budget numbers are put together. Another first began this week when the budget committee opened up their meetings to public comment. Education had their go around and it was interesting to get the take of a lot of educators that came to discuss Superintendent Luna’s “new” ideas.

My phone has been ringing with calls from home having concerns about Internet classes for all high school students. One thing is for certain. If this new program is not well-designed and is not something that will work well, and there is not teacher buy-in, it would be doomed from the outset. I can’t help but think that technology in the classroom is essential for our students to keep up in these times. I know there are programs out there that work well and we have to implement them correctly if we do it at all. After talking to several this past week, I think I will have to be convinced that this is a good thing. For now I am trying to keep an open mind and am doing some research.

The house health and welfare committee met a couple of times this week with JFAC to hear the Department of Health and Welfare cover its budget. There wasn’t a whole lot new expressed there, and they told us that they are trying their best to get their arms around making their budget work. It seemed to me that most of the difficulty we have with this budget lies in the optional programs Idaho has embraced over the years. E-mails are coming in from all over the state wanting us not to cut any of these programs. And I have to admit that we have to be careful that we don’t eliminate the less costly items and drive Medicaid folks to more expensive service providers.

About ten days ago I was watching Fox news and saw an interview with Gov. Huckabee. He pretty well expressed what happens in the states with regard to their budgets. He said that most of the states money is spent in three areas, to educate, medicate and incarcerate. In Idaho, 90 to 95% of our budget goes to those three areas.

After Gov. Otter made the announcement that Sen. Geddes would be moving to the Tax Commission, it was interesting to see all of the scurrying around that has occurred. One member of the Senate told me that because of the resignation there had to be a complete reorganization of the Senate. It involved the switching of offices and new committee assignments for some. One Senator even commented to me that now he had an office with a window. As my mother would have put it, “Oh brother.”

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By Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Bone

A couple of years ago, we were cleaning the shop at the ranch. While doing so I could hardly believe some of the things that I had kept around the place. There were worn-out bearing races, short pieces of useless metal, and other old parts that we had accumulated from previous repair efforts. I thought that it probably was just me, but I soon found out that the whole family had been doing the same thing I had. Apparently, there is a little bit of pack rat in all of us.

Each year as I leave a legislative session, I gather up some of my stuff from the capital and take it home. Linda is not terribly fond of this activity because it all resides very comfortably in the off-season in my office. Now I’m not going to say that I never use these things, but I do tend to go through them from time to time looking for information on things that were done during the previous session. As you can imagine, the next thing that happens is to repack everything and haul it back to the capital. I was doing that last week on Sunday evening after arriving in Boise. The only other person I happened to see at that time in the entire building was a security guard and I don’t think he saw me. It was an eerie feeling to have everything so quiet knowing full well that the legislature would start in earnest the next morning.

On Monday, After Convening in the House, and gathering the Senators, the Elected Officials, and the Judiciary, the Governor Gave His Annual State of the State Message and Budget Message. It was one of the more interesting that I have seen during my time in the legislature. I think it is the first time that I have heard a governor not present a large wish list for the legislature to consider. He has projected a small increase in revenues but seemed to recognize that there is no room this year for new items in the budget. One thing that stood out, was his request to bond for the money that we owe the federal government for unemployment benefits. It certainly deserves consideration but at the same time we need to make sure that we don’t over-extend the resources of the state.
The other item during the week that seemed to occupy a lot of discussion time was the new education reforms that Superintendent Luna proposed. I think it is a good thing for students to begin to learn how to take courses online. There are so many resources available for education in this day and age and I hope that educators will have an open mind when it comes to considering these new ways of educating kids. I have been told that there is a vast new resource online called Google Apps Education that is being successfully used in other parts of the country. I hope we will look seriously at what is available from that source. The other part of the proposal in providing a laptop computer for every student is one that will need careful consideration. Just giving a computer to each student could be problematic and a better way might be to require some ownership of the students for the equipment. It seems like when we as humans have some ownership we take better care of things.

Several members of the House health and welfare committee had a chance to participate in a conference call with the former director of health and welfare for the state of Rhode Island. That state has worked with the federal government in getting flexibility to operate the Medicaid program. They claim to be realizing great savings while at the same time not reducing the programs or eligibility. This looks to be a major new effort that we will be looking at during this session.

And so it begins. One of the suggestions I heard around these halls was that we probably should just adopt the Governor’s budget and go home. That may be too much to hope for because I am sure a lot of legislators want to have a careful look at what he has proposed. Seeing how it is our constitutional responsibility to develop a budget, that is what we will do.

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Idaho Chooses Life

Most pro-Lifers are aware of the financial support given to Planned Parenthood by the political class. Most of us deeply resent the fact that they use our tax dollars as if it were their personal property, to embroil us as stockholders in an evil corporation.
But the partnership between government and the abortion industry goes far beyond mere tax dollars.

Let’s consider Idaho’s own Central District Health, a public agency centered in Ada County. This agency of local government has the purported mission of protecting the public health. One must assume that a good part of their activities are actually effective at fulfilling that charge. However, a recent article from the Idaho Reporter demonstrates that they are also a driving the Left’s social agenda.

“Central District Health forgets abstinence for birth control on new teen website,” written by Dustin Hurst informs us that the public agency is no longer interested in promoting abstinence to Idaho’s teens. Following the lead of Planned Parenthood, its website all but concedes that teenagers will be sexually active and our job is to help them do so “responsibly”. Their section on birth control doesn’t even bother to mention the most-effective form of pregnancy avoidance: abstinence.

In an interview with the news website, Dave Fotsch, public information officer for CDH, explains that his agency believes teenagers probably don’t want to talk with their parents about sexual issues. Even more striking is the outrageous assumption that “parents probably aren’t comfortable talking with their kids about it.” Therefore, the liberals controlling this public agency are, obviously, compelled to act on their biases.

But Central District Health’s working partnership with Planned Parenthood goes well beyond promoting their shared social and political agenda.

We have learned that employees of CDH are now pimping Boise high schools students, promoting the website and giving area teenagers handouts about sexual issues – including promoting HPV vaccination and abortion.

The handout explicitly states that CDH staff will refer pregnant girls to Planned Parenthood abortuaries if they are interested in “terminating their pregnancy”. All without parental involvement, of course.

In essence, this public agency is functioning as an arm of Planned Parenthood: encouraging premature sexual activity among vulnerable children, then happily shipping them off to Planned Parenthood’s abortion business when the inevitable happens.

Everyone wins: CDH gets more grant money from the Obama social engineers to spread the gospel of promiscuity, Planned Parenthood makes more dough killing babies. Even the pharmaceutical industry reaps financial reward from birth control pills, vaccines loaded with side effects. Yep, great for everyone – except the babies killed, the children abused and the families betrayed.
And let’s not forget about us dumb taxpayers.

It is an outrageous and immoral arrangement that warrants legislative action.

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