The financial rescue plan, the economy's dramatic drop and the need to scale back federal spending to reduce the deficit may mean hard times for segments of Idaho's economy.

For every dollar Idahoans paid in federal taxes in 2005, we got about $1.21 back from the federal government. That ratio could drop if Congress really cuts farm programs or changes the highway fund formula to benefit larger states.

But one place that likely will benefit whether Barack Obama or John McCain is elected is the Idaho National Laboratory. The 890-square-mile lab saw federal spending peak in the early 1990s just before the end of the Cold War. Today it gets about $800 million a year.

George Bush proposed to gradually close down the lab, a plan stopped by Idaho's congressional delegation. The lab's nuclear energy mission, which had been reduced during the Clinton years, was beefed up, especially with the next-generation nuclear reactor program.

That program, which is developing a high-temperature gas reactor, would not only generate electricity but serve as a source of hydrogen for cars. It is the kind of technology development that won't quickly return profits and is best carried out by the government.

But the INL is not only nuclear. This year, the lab is spending $60 million on alternative energy, including cellulosic ethanol research, battery testing for electric cars and more complicated and perhaps significant research on developing the big-picture systems that will allow industry to integrate alternative energy technologies into our current power and transportation networks. One program examines the challenges of plug-in cars.

Energy is moving to the forefront. Obama proposed spending $15 billion annually in basic energy research. A lot of that is going to go through the Department of Energy, and some of it will get to Idaho.

McCain has emphasized nuclear energy, but he also mentions alternative energy as well. Inherently his focus on climate change and his own bill that would cap carbon producing technology and allow companies to trade their rights to burn carbon would shift funding to non-carbon alternatives.

The INL is second to Micron as an employer in the state, but with the current planned cutbacks at the computer chipmaker, the INL could take the lead.

Anything that grows its business and research grows tax receipts in the state. Right now it has 7,000 employees.

But the great potential statewide is the spinoff. If energy technology is going to be to Idaho's future what computer technology was to the past two decades, the INL could be the center of Idaho's new economy.

FORGING FOREST PLANS

The extension of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act brings back from the dead Resource Advisory Councils, which direct a portion of the spending to projects like weed control, habitat improvement and fire prevention.

These councils, called RACs, included a wide membership including labor and industry, environmentalists, recreation people, elected officials, tribal representatives and educators. Here in Southwest Idaho they worked together to pick more than $5 million in projects like replacing poor culverts that stopped fish passage, treating noxious weeds, reducing fuels in the Boise and Payette national forests and trail rehabilitation.

But perhaps the most important project was the building of relationships between people with very different views of how to manage the land. When Boise Cascade closed the Cascade, Horseshoe Bend and Emmett mills, many residents aimed their anger at environmentalists, who played a role but were not the only forces that led to the end of the timber business in southern Idaho.

On the RACs, former adversaries like John McCarthy, now of the Wilderness Society, Cascade rancher Phil Davis and many others worked together to pick projects. Now the RACs will be reorganized and they will have 75 percent more money. But it is doubtful the money will be authorized again after four years.

That presents an opportunity for the RACs to work together to build a consensus in their areas on how their forests will be managed in the future. If these diverse groups can develop, along with forest managers, a long-range program for forest restoration, they can help build a new base for funding the work most people agree needs to be done.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484