Huge Conservative Victory this week in the Idaho Senate!

A big part of the 2024 legislative session these past 5 weeks has been the fight over how to set Idaho’s government spending. Idaho has grown government spending 54% over the last 4 years. For decades, the legislature has only reviewed 19% of the total spending before setting the budgets.

But, because more conservatives were elected to the legislature two years ago, we were able to set the course for major budget reforms this session. The result will be significant savings of your taxpayer dollars.

The Old way of budgeting.

In previous years, the budget setting committee would listen for 6 weeks to the governor’s recommendations and the agency budget requests. Then, in a rapid flurry, the committee would send more than a hundred agency budgets to the floors of the House and Senate for a vote. These budget bills consisted of all of the previous year’s spending for each department plus all of the requests for new spending combined into one spending bill.

We would give senators and representatives only one choice in which they must vote for all of the agency needs and all of the agency wants in a single vote. There was no option to divide each agency’s requests into two separate spending bills for the needs and the wants.

This process made it very difficult for some legislators to vote against budgets since they did not want to be seen as hostile to departments like the Idaho State Police or the Division of Veterans Services. The result was that for the last 5 years the bloated budgets always passed the Idaho Senate without a single spending bill being returned to the budget committee with an order to sharpen their pencils.

After newly elected conservatives like me and other Idaho Freedom Caucus members regularly debated on the House and Senate floors against the excessive growth in government spending during the 2023 legislative session, we entered 2024 with the determination and cooperation of the budget committee’s co-chairs to finally make several changes to the budget setting process this year.

The new and improved way of budgeting.

Here are some of the reforms that were introduced this 2024 session:

• Every agency budget will now be separated into at least two spending bills. The first will consist of the base budget that meets the basic needs of the agency, and the second will consist of the budget committee’s approved requests for growth and new spending for each agency.
• The budget committee will set budgets throughout the 12-week legislative session rather than waiting until the end of the session. This will allow our senate and house colleagues a regular pace and more time to review each budget before being asked to vote on the floor.
• Instead of hearing what the agencies want for 6 weeks straight, the budget comittee will now use a significant portion of our committee time to actually work together and negotiate agreements on the budget requests.
• The budget committee is now compiling and including in our decisions 5-year lookbacks at how each agency has grown and how it has been using its resources. This has not been previously available to the committee.
• In between legislative sessions, the budget setting committee will begin zero based budgeting by analyzing all of the spending in each agency’s base budget.

Winds of Resistance

Change was difficult for some budget committee members. So, last week, the Democrats and some of the moderate Republicans joined forces to attempt to undo the conservative budget reforms by bringing motions to the budget committee to set the budgets according to the old way. In response, conservatives worked for several days to persuade our fellow senate members to adopt the reforms.

This involved intense debates leading up to Thursday, February 8, when the Senate went to the floor and passed the first budget reform bill in a resounding victorious vote of 28-7.

A Win for Conservative Governance

Conservatives were able to persuade all Republicans to vote in favor of the new process, and Idaho’s taxpayers like you and me will benefit. The Democrats doggedly and unanimously opposed the reforms.

A day before Thursday’s Senate vote, the House of Representatives took a vote on their floor for budget reform, and conservatives won that vote 38-31. The following day they ousted their majority leader Megan Blanksma because she voted against the conservative budget reforms.

Conservative budget reform is a huge victory for conservative governance, and the Idaho Freedom Caucus and other conservatives proved that we can put together a winning coalition among Republicans.

A week ago, while the debate for budget reforms was still raging, the Idaho Capital Sun ran an article which was a contrast between my view of the budget changes compared to the Governor Brad Little’s view. Here is what the article said of the governor:

“One unintended consequence Governor Little sees is it could be more difficult to pass the line items and new budget requests because the maintenance budgets are separated out and the line items are isolated”.

In the same article, they summarized my position as the exact opposite perspective – “I want to see the (spending growth) trend come back to normal,” Herndon said. “We cannot cut taxes unless we cut spending. That’s the bottom line.”

“I suspect in future years agencies will be much more thorough in justifying their line item requests when they realize they will get a little more attention,” Herndon said.

You can read the full article here.

Contact me with any questions you have about Idaho’s budget process by calling (208) 610-2680.