Idaho’s family-unfriendly Legislature
A pattern of conduct continues to emerge
largely among the Idaho Legislature’s Republican majority—putting the squeeze on
social services that touch families.
The unhappy suspicion is that lawmaker
mischief is more than just tightwad budgeting. Instead, an ideological hostility
seems to be at work.
The most recent victim is Idaho Planned
Parenthood, which is quitting its participation in a federal family planning
program in exasperation.
The group’s president, Rebecca Poedy, says
Planned Parenthood simply anticipates the Legislature’s renewed attempt to force
the organization to quit accepting federal funds. Moreover, she expects
anti-abortion GOP lawmakers to impose new rules that make Planned Parenthood’s
contractual work even more impossible.
The current contract expired at the end of
September.
So, who then will care for 8,000
low-income women that Planned Parenthood had been serving?
Dictating the legislative agenda from the
sidelines, Idaho Chooses Life anti-abortion advocate David Ripley is joyous. But
like so many anti-abortion crusaders, Ripley talks and demonstrates a lot but
does little to care for women in need of family planning.
Along with family planning, public
education is another hapless victim of legislative ideologues.
For years, schools have been shortchanged:
Defiant lawmakers, who claim to be strict law-and-order adherents, have ignored
a judge’s landmark ruling that orders state funding of school repairs.
The reckless Idaho tax cut that drained
the treasury, and now is used as an excuse for starving state programs, has
eerie parallels in President Bush’s deficit-exploding strategy that has created
a $500 billion deficit this year and excuses that federal programs—except for
the military and "anti-terrorism" agencies—must be placed on rations.
Ominous warnings continue to be ignored.
One of the darkest came last week from University of Idaho professor James
Foster, who told state Senate Education chairman Gary Schroeder that "the
message I’ve been getting is that education is doomed in the state of Idaho. I
sense hostility toward K through 12 especially."
And to what end? Idaho can’t possibly
benefit from needy women unserved by family planning and public schools existing
as paupers.
Which public program is next on the GOP’s
chopping block?