Pray for snow? There’s a lot more Idaho leaders should be praying for | Opinion
If House Majority Leader Jason Monks, R-Meridan, thinks a day of prayer on March 1 will fix America and Idaho in particular, he needs to get the reasons for the prayer straight.
His resolution is a prayer for snow and rain, but he also attempts in the resolution to identify what he thinks is wrong with America by citing 14 different reasons why Idaho needs this prayer day. (As of the writing of this column, the resolution had not yet passed both houses.)
Monks may have sterling intentions, but he fails to name just who is responsible for the challenges facing America, not even what he calls the “escalating political violence.”
No mention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). America’s gestapo has been turned loose by President Donald Trump, ostensibly to deport illegal immigrants. Instead, ICE has invaded cities far from the border, killed protesters, and created enormous turmoil in families, neighborhoods and small towns, as it did in Wilder last year.
Too often, ICE fails to distinguish between undocumented immigrants and citizens whose rights they violate with impunity. Perhaps Monks didn’t hear how ICE dragged an American citizen from his Minneapolis home in his underwear in subzero temperatures. ICE agents did so without a warrant, ignoring identification evidence, before releasing him an hour later with no apology.
And then there are the killings in Minneapolis of two protesters by ICE agents, masked and out of control, violating the kind of police standards Monks can find in his hometown of Meridian. And ICE agents do all of this with their identity shielded, unlike how state and local police enforce the law.
If there is one overriding reason to pray to the heavens for relief from political violence, it’s to rid America of the violent tactics of ICE that have swept up many innocents in its vigilante campaign on the streets of America.
There is also not a word in Monks’ resolution about the state budget crisis. We need help from somewhere, so why not prayer to beseech the Almighty to help Gov. Brad Little and his Republican legislators realize they created this crisis?
After years of Republican tax cuts, tax exemptions for special interests, and the recent decision to apply Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill to Idaho’s budget in service to the wealthy, it is no wonder they now have a budget that cannot cover the costs of state government. It’s as if they are standing on the sidelines completely unaware and blameless for their own deficit-inducing actions over recent years.
When they weren’t manipulating the tax code to please their big donors, they were diverting millions from the state budget for state aid to private schools to the tune of $50 million last year, with Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield going along on the spending spree. Watch that number. It will grow with the passage of time as they claim it will have no impact on public education.
Idaho is already ranked near the bottom of the states in per-student public school funding, and other states like Arizona can show what happens when funding is diverted from public schools to private schools. ABC News in Phoenix reported last month that 10 Phoenix-area districts closed some of their schools, and since 2024, a total of 24 schools in that valley have closed or will close soon thanks to declining enrollment.
Parents in Idaho will copy what Arizona parents did. Take their kids to private schools with the voucher to help cover tuition costs, and then the governor and state legislature scratch their heads as to why enrollment declines in public schools and threatens school closures.
Finally, in what can only be described as the height of fiscal irresponsibility, this Republican majority takes aim at essential services. First, it was Little last summer who chopped 3% from state agencies, and now it’s the Republican supermajority on JFAC that cuts an additional 1% this fiscal year, or $131 million, and an extra 2% next fiscal year, or $143 million.
When you add up the work of Little and Republicans in the Legislature, there is real damage to the health, welfare and safety of their constituents. But no need to take my word about this budget fiasco. Just listen to the state agency directors as they documented the impact of Republican mismanagement of the state budget.
Consider Idaho’s ability to fight the wildfires that can wipe out residential communities and otherwise ruin those idyllic summer days Idahoans enjoy. Just read Idaho’s Capital Sun’s review of the Republican plan to cut the state budget. It reported the comments of Dustin Miller, the Idaho director of public lands, who testified that the new round of cuts approved by JFAC would force the state to hire fewer seasonal fighters, cut back on prevention work and incur additional hits to the state budget if Idaho’s inability to control a fire requires it to use and pay for federal help.
Miller said, “These holdbacks proposed by the Idaho Legislature will cause us to have to cut back the number of acres treated and increase fire risk across the landscape, especially in areas prone to fire.”
Director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Juliet Charron, appointed by Little, claimed the “cuts to bone” of her agency would threaten funding for suicide prevention, foster care, and children’s and family mental health services, and would eventually result in higher costs down the line.
The impact of Republican budget cuts will also reverse the bits of progress Idaho has made in recent years in getting Idaho out of last place or near last place in physicians per capita in the U.S. Cuts to medical education will affect the ability to fund medical residencies, the last and most important aspect of training a doctor for clinical duties.
The shocking inability of JFAC Republicans to understand cause and effect in their budget work is devastating to a state with a crying need for doctors across the state.
Not a word in Monks’ resolution about how the budget crisis will be solved on the backs of Idaho constituents. And it’s not as though they didn’t have fair warning from their colleagues. When Republicans offer their usual round of tax cuts, it’s a small minority of Democratic legislators who caution about the impact in the out years. The out years have arrived, and Republicans still don’t get it.
If there is a day of prayer, it should beseech the Almighty to infuse the Idaho governor and his Republican supermajority in the Legislature with insight to view taxation and the budget it replenishes annually as what provides for the Idaho “commons” — for the streets we drive, the schools our kids attend, the safety of Idahoans on its highways, the services state agencies provide to care for those incapable of caring for themselves and the protection we need from natural disasters, to name just a few of state government’s responsibilities to its citizens.
Now there’s a conversion worth praying for!
Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio, a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman and a contributing columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.