Notes From The Floor

Disgusted

Some days I walk myself to the statehouse in the dark, sit attentive through long committees, ask unwelcome questions, end up the sole no or yes vote on a bill, look at the long list of evening events we are supposed to attend and wonder what I am doing.

I forget how many kind people have written to tell me how much better it makes them feel that I am here. I forget that on occasion I do make a change that affects lives, I give voice to what isn't heard or those who will be harmed. And that is something.

It is hard though.

Today when we heard a simple bill to mandate that insurance companies cover "elemental formula" as if it were medicine so that kids (whose lives depend on eating this formula instead of food) can afford it and can stay alive.

So that you know, some kids can't eat regular food. At about two months their bodies reject their mother's milk and if they are lucky their doctor figures it out and puts them on special formula and then about 1/3 of them get better quickly, another bunch get better in a year or two and a very few need the formula for life.

But Idaho insurance companies don't cover this stuff. And after today's vote they still won't. The companies promise though to try harder and we believed them. We don't like mandates I guess. This is something new for me to know about the Commerce Committee. It governs health insurance. Or, I know now, doesn't govern health insurance. All the things we COULD do to make health insurance companies do a better job, stop denying claims, be more accountable for making people wade through so much red tape to get something covered they know should be covered... we don't do that. We trust insurance companies instead.

I sat there today and listened to those parents' stories. I can only ask what kind of nation makes people lose everything because someone in their family is sick? What kind of government tells them to get a divorce so they can maybe qualify for Medicaid so their child does not die? What kind of state makes people go through this? Run up tens of thousands on their credit cards, sell everything? What kind of people refuse to do anything because the insurance company lobbyists are really nice people and they promise us things if we will only agree not to make them do what they don't want to.

I'm disgusted because we have no backbone, because I work in one of the few places where we COULD fix some of what is wrong with healthcare and we won't. I'm disgusted because I work in one of the few places in the state where the people I work with mostly don't seem to think there is anything wrong with insurance companies or the way health care works. Or worse, they use how broken the system is to agree to do nothing at all.

On a similar insurance coverage issue, Lot Watts, social worker from St. Als Hospital testifies as to how some cancer patients are unable to pay for a chemotherapy drug because insurers classify it as a pharmaceutical rather than a cancer therapy. Watts and the chemotherapy bill's sponsor Senator Joyce Broadsword are opposed by not fewer than seven seated insurance industry lobbyists.

Ayes and Nays

When the Senate secretary reads the roll for a vote, typically if you are listening in on line or through the television, you will hear a long stream of Ayes. The controversial stuff is killed in committee, never introduced or stuck in a drawer. What gets to the floor, has jumped through a lot of hoops, made it by many gate keepers and has enough of a force behind it to be considered by the whole body.

When a Democrat brings a bill to committee, there is a bit of a disadvantage. We have possibly not had much of a chance to chat with the committee chair about the bill at functions over the summer. We may have co-sponsors but this year we can not longer list them prominently so that anyone would know anyone but one of us is supportive. We may be asked to get an attorney general's opinion or feedback from Governor appointed department heads.

We rely on the kindness and respect of our colleagues to be allowed to have a bill printed, to get a hearing on the bill or to have it sent once printed to the committee where it is supposed to go. Lots of things can happen to a bill. It can indeed be sent to hostile committee, on purpose or inadvertently.

I had a bill that simply makes it an employer's, not an insurer's decision to allow a business' employees to buy health insurance for their unmarried partners, boy friends of girlfriends and other family members if they are not married. The bill is a benefit to the state because it increases the number of people and their children with access to insurance. This improves preventative care, reduces emergency costs, catastrophic fund costs and other taxpayer funded health care costs.

The bill went to State Affairs Committee, not Commerce where insurance related legislation usually goes.

Beer and Wine

When we get a phone call from a constituent to the Legislative information desk, someone sends us a little yellow piece of paper with the brief massage typed out and a return address where we can call or write back. Last week the yellow phone call slips started flowing, a constant stream of "Don't tax my beer and wine" messages rippling out from the alcohol distributors, to the bars and restaurants to the patrons, riled like colonists at a tea party.

I understand. No one likes to pay more for anything, especially in hard economic times. But I ask, would we rather pay more through some other part of state government to build more prisons, pay for more emergency care from car accidents, more child protection and domestic violence shelters -- all because we do not offer nearly the treatment we should to prevent or end alcoholism and substance abuse in the state of Idaho?

I promise we will all just pay more if we don't someday create a dedicated funding source for treatment. And I'm talking about treatment, not about advertising or bill boards here. We will all watch people in our communities suffer year after year because we didn't help this year, because we didn't see the larger issue here.

I don't like the temperance argument. Moderation is what most people use in their approach to beer and wine. But if those of us who do drink beer and wine are not asked to pay for treatment, then who should pay? If we could tax Meth, believe me, we as a legislature would. We can't. Not Meth or Heroin or Cocaine or any of it. But when someone's family member is addicted and they can not afford an expensive treatment center, where will they go? Who will pay?

Let me say this, I don't know about you, but I would have paid. I would have stepped up and shelled out the seven cents a glass of wine or bottle of beer, and I would have paid so that finally the state of Idaho has a chance to fund real drug treatment as we never have before.

But here on the afternoon of this cloudy spring day, when the Senate floor is subdued and people file in and out on their way to and from committees, it is too late. The beer and wine tax went down, five to thirteen in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee this morning.

Top Ten About the Stimulus

I know the stimulus plan puns are getting old. Stimulating conversation. Less than stimulating conversation. In any case, our Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee today spent the first of three days discussing Idaho's share of / potential for/ obstacles to / failures related to / and deadlines for.... the federal stimulus. Hoping eagerly for something that will help the 50,000 Idahoans looking for work.

Top ten things I learned:

10. This money is from Idahoans, past and future, to be sent via Washington DC via federal agencies, grants, direct appropriations and requests which many pray are going to be made by the Governor...

9. Goals include avoiding job losses and lay offs in state government, avoiding state tax increases, creating new jobs, making the nation more energy independent and preventing the immediate implosion of a hand full of Governments in states from one coast to the other.

8. It is true the governor can reject this money. But we as a legislature can override his objections, as long as he doesn't veto them. (Of course 2/3 of us could always vote in favor of a veto override and that would be that.)

7. If you have an idea, you need to apply to a state agency and the Governor's Department of Fiscal Management (DFM). These budget analysts have some flexible money to use for creative economic development, energy and job creating ideas. Can we put the money in to fill all the holes in our state budget? No. Might it free up money we now spend on Medicaid to prevent the deepest of state employee pay cuts? Possibly yes, for now.

6. People can have ideas. Non governmental entities can come up with shovel-ready (can be permitted and ready to grind into motion in 120 days) job producing ideas as long as they do not involve: casino gambling, aquariums, zoos, golf courses or swimming pools.

5. The governor is asking other governors, including Democrats for help. This is good.

4. If you have ideas that use American made products or resources (steel, iron, some manufactured goods), that is encouraged.

3. Everyone's ideas have to be turned in by noon on March 4.

2. Not until March 19 will the Governor's advisory committees have their reports done.

1. The legislature will sort of be sitting around until then. Sitting around for this body, and especially the body across the hall there, is not a good idea. Legislators can hatch crazy ideas when we are bored. Bad ideas generally. With the exception of the Napoleon Dynamite Resolution which was one of the best bored things anyone ever passed through the legislature.

Read it if you need some cheering up. 
http://www3.state.id.us/oasis/2005/HCR029.html

Running Low

Senate Floor. Eight A.M. Senators scattered at desks. Rain falling lightly outside. The place echoes in ways the House chambers did not. There it all feels close and muffled.

It is a session of stops and starts. The little white numbers that outline the Senate and House calendars, sit mostly in their boxes. The boards are mostly blank as our beloved, red vested Senate pages leave and a new crop begins work today.

The House Chair of the Joint Finance Committee, Maxine Bell, shared her shopping habits with us last week at a dead moment, while the committee waited for JoAn Wood to come  make a presentation on transportation issues. Maxine explained that she buys everything at home in her own local grocery store and hauls it here to Boise to the place she stays. It is her own local contribution to her local economy and a way she visits with constituents. Most important, she shared that she knows when the session should be done by the amount of toilet paper she has left. She says that we all had better get to work or she knows she is going to run out.

Losing Ground in Silence

Sitting at my desk on the floor of the Senate. Outside it is growing warm and across Boise people are planting spinach.

Only one bill to go before we break for the weekend and all fly off home. I will fly the ten or so blocks home to dig my hands in the dirt and try to forget this day for just a few hours at least, just until it is time to start planning for how to change this downward slide in the advancement of our rights here in this tiny isolated red red state. Just a few hours until we can figure out how to end the silence and make this issue clear and unavoidable in every corner in every little town of this thawing state.

On a simple print hearing vote this morning where seven committee members heard from Senator Coiner first and then from me on why more than 42,000 people deserve to be able to work at their jobs, go to school and live in a house or apartment without fear, the senate state affairs committee voted five to two not to introduce the proposal as a bill.

Not to even give it the courtesy of print. Not to acknowledge that discrimination against gay people might be a problem worth discussing inside the state's law making body.

Clearly we have far far to go and need many more voices in there with ours because people all over this state live quietly in fear every day. In school rooms, in board rooms, at desks, in processing plants and apartment complexes. What are the values of a state which, by omission, condones discrimination year after year, whose law makers know better, but refuse to stand up and act.

The committee members asked not a single question. Senator Stegner, always valiant, made the motion to approve the introduction of the bill. Senator Kelly seconded. The committee was silent but for their brief voice vote. Five to two. No.

 

Risch and Crapo and Debt

Senator Jim Risch is speaking to us now about his experience in Washington DC. He is spending a very long time talking about his seniority. I suspect after so long in the executive branch here in Idaho, he is less accustomed to being somewhere near the bottom of a pecking order. His words suggest some tension with his more senior Senator Mike Crapo with whom he says votes on every bill and amendment.

Risch and Crapo both in speaking to this body, sternly remind us that the current borrowing is mortgaging our childrens' future and sending American dollars to China. Senator Crapo certainly has done a bit of that borrowing in his ten years in the Senate... let's say ten trillion in borrowing? But according to Senator Risch, this borrowing is different because a Democratic President is borrowing to help people afford health care, to make us less reliant on high cost oil and to keep states from raising taxes and or going bankrupt.

The real irony is in Risch's statement about how freeing up credit will fix our economic crisis.

Is not our problem in part that families and small businesses are too deep in debt already? Wages are so low and the cost of fuel, housing, daycare and insurance so high that people can not meet basic needs with out borrowing to fix the broken refrigerator, the car or to buy groceries or pay a doctor bill.

More lending good Senators? To really fix our economy, I think we have more fundamental issues to address.

Food on a Table

Sometimes a day unravels. Sometimes it just starts with a conversation you can not believe your committee is having. Fifty thousand Idahoans unemployed. A nation trying to keep states from going bankrupt. Laying off state employees. Hundreds of businesses folding up and blowing away.

I remember how former legislator and Joint Finance Committee member, Margaret Henbest looked in here in the statehouse hallways sometimes. It was a warning to anyone asking anything of her. I used to think she was just a bit high strung and should chill out a bit. I feel that look in myself somewhere now on days like this.

People's lives are affected by our actions so clearly in years like this. What we fund and what we cut. Who loses a job. What business closes because no one can afford to buy what they sell. There is weight to this year that is unusual. More gravity and uncertainty. What we thought could be a short session, may lengthen as forces between the Governor's office and Republican leadership debate whether and what of the stimulus to take. Their delay helps no one.

These dollars are dollars paid to and to be owed by Idahoans to the Federal Government, regardless whether we send the whole check back to Washington. Some of the money headed our way may not rescue us from ressession but will keep states like ours from raising taxes for roads or to keep schools open next year. Some will help insulate us from further crisis. It is not the recovery package I would have crafted but it is the one we have in front of us. The indecision and posturing does not help one single business stay open or one single family put food on the table.

Being Brave for Gay People

Today listening to Senator Tom Gannon's memorial on the Senate floor, I remember how full of hope and optimism I was four years ago. My colleagues in the Senate collectively fended of an anti-gay constitutional amendment, standing up for us as gay people against intense political pressure.  Fourteen Senators stood, brave and eloquent. Tom Gannon was one of them.

It felt then like things could only get better, for our families and for safety and equality. But marriage became a tool of political power like the atomic bomb. It struck fear into the heart of every progressive law maker from here to Alaska and back. Those who once knew a line of discrimination they would not cross, lost that line in blind fear.

And our community here in Idaho grew understandably angry and bitter, even if briefly. And for those legislators who stood up for us once, the anger may be all they remember.

I hope not. I hope they remember the tears of relief after the vote in 2005. The flowers we sent. The cards and packages of candies. It was not that we gained any new rights in that vote. It was that we could remain in legal limbo for awhile more. And we did for another year until Idaho passed arguably one of the most restrictive Constitutional Amendments in the country.

I see the looks on other Senator's faces when I mention gays and lesbians. Do they think I love reminding them that I belong to a sub class of Idahoans that does not have the right to work at a job, attend a school in peace, hold a family gym membership or health insurance policy as they do? Do I love reminding them I belong to the group of people that can be forced to die alone in a hospital room; whose possessions at death can be distributed to estranged family members over the wishes of the immediate family because that family is not of the right gender.

Please tell me this all makes sense to someone.... outside religion, beyond what one person believes verses what another believes through their religious faith. Please tell me we have a legal and constitutional reason why I deserve less than those men and women I serve with every day. I am, in the words of others, a good person, a good Senator, a good hard working American, someone who has given of myself to my country and community. But I'm not good enough for equality for one small reason. A reason that affects no one in the whole world in a way that is not positive. My partner who served her country in the Air Force, is she less worthy of love or happiness? Of equality? Fairness? Respect? Humanity?

So yes to my colleagues, I am coming back this year to bother you, because you have not yet stood up again. So many of you are willing if only others will just be brave. This is the time to be brave. There is harm being done to good people every day we delay, every single day that we remain one of the few states that does not allow gay people the simple right to be employed, to go to school, to live somewhere regardless of who we love, who we have spent our lives with.

All of us can hide in that comfortable place where we don't have to educate our constituents or colleagues, where we don't have to be brave or take a stand on something hard. We can hide there forever and pretend that is OK. But I know so well how many of you have gay family members, sons , daughters, brothers, sisters. Each of you will think I'm talking about you, but I'm not. I'm talking about LOTS of you and you never talk to each other about it. And if you think your sons and daughters, nieces and nephews want to bring it up any more than I do... just imagine.

Where is the time for bravery? For justice? For eloquence? I can't do this alone. Believe me. Can we not be brave enough to make some step forward this year?


..............

Friday we have a hearing to amend the Idaho Human Rights Act to add sexual orientation and gender identity and to include protections for gay people in employment, housing and education. 8 AM Senate State Affairs Committee, Second Floor, Old Ada County Court House at 6th & State St.

If you care, please do not stand by this year. We need supporters, parents, employers, friends, students, landlords, farmers. This will not be a hearing for testimony, just for witness and to steel those we are asking to vote yes. There are nine members on the committee. Please bring cards, flowers, something to thank those who vote yes.

If you can not come but want to write a letter to the editor of your local paper big or small PLEASE do... especially those of you out there who have never written a letter to support us before.

Who is the Governor?

Some days, Butch Otter is the governor of Idaho. The guy in the tight jeans with the big hair and million dollar grin. The guy who recently has become virtually bionic with hip and other joint replacements. The guy who shuns his city roots and clings to a young cowboy image like a life raft.

But on state employee policy and who knows what else, Mike Gwarney runs the state of Idaho. The well groomed, sweet faced man, with perfectly manicured white hair. He calls the shots. He has spearheaded this "run government like a business" (some might say "like a sweatshop") mentality that has cut benefits for employees and retirees, increased workloads, cut health care, cut jobs, cut leave, cut protections, all without bringing state employee pay up to the level of the private sector which the Governor says he emulates.

This morning the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee gave-in to the Governor's office and passed language that gave him the sole power to decide how to cut 5% out of Idaho's budget for state employees and personnel. We let him decide whether State Agency Directors will use layoffs, pay cuts or furloughs (mandatory days off) to cut $32 million from what Idaho pays to and for agency employees and another $47 million from what we spend on teachers and school personnel.

"Any across the board pay reduction shall be determined by the Governor and shall affect all classified, permanent, temporary and seasonal employees." Our language went on later to say, "Any remaining reduction in funding shall be managed by the respective agency directors, with approval by the Governor...by keeping funded positions vacant, by the use of furloughs, and if necessary by a reduction in force." Layoffs.

I asked questions before and during our committee meeting. My sense was that we as the budget writing committee wanted to protect the economy and state employees by using means other than lay offs. Foolishly I let that give me comfort.

I know furloughs are by far the preferred method of cutting costs, especially from state employees' perspectives. To some extent then employees get to determine which paycheck will be short.

It has taken a long, long time for the legislature to give state employees any reasonable cost of living pay increases. It is very rational for employees to fear that it will take a long, long time before the legislature would give back any 5% base reduction in pay. The trust is not there so I'm sure that furloughs sound far better than pay cuts.

Near the end of the committee meeting, Mike Gwartney came to us to talk about the state insurance fund. Out of nowhere he said that Idaho could expect an increase in insurance spending because, he said, 'When there are layoffs people get their teeth fixed.'

Layoffs? Who had said anything about layoffs? Especially layoffs massive enough to affect the state insurance fund's tooth fixing budget? Hadn't we just spelled out in committee that layoffs were the last resort?

In many cases, especially on the front lines, people are already doing several other people's jobs. 

I looked at the man with the perfectly groomed white hair. We had just given him the power to execute 5% reductions in personnel spending. He had cover finally to help Otter "Find efficiencies." "Reduce the size of government." "Starve the beast."

Does he not realize that, to some people, he and the governor are synonymous? What a cavalier way to wear that power, not know what a warning he would send by tucking the word "layoffs" into what he came to say.

State Employee Pay Cuts

It is not yet six am. I am dressed and ready to head to the Statehouse. Yesterday we were told the early morning Joint Finance Committee meetings will start. We will have a pre meeting to work out "motions" or proposals for how much money we decide we will really have to spend for state government in the last half of 2009 and the start of 2010. That's medical care, prisons, drug treatment and water quality protection and especially thousands and thousands of people who's job it is to do this work of the state, from teaching our kids to guarding our prisons, safeguarding social security numbers to making sure that feed lots don't contaminate well water.

In a tiny room that is now a library but once was part of the county jail, we will debate how deeply and in what way to cut state employee pay. It is that bad.

Will we use furloughs (days off without pay) or base cuts as deep as 5% or 7% in state employee pay? Some like governor Otter want to lay off employees. I personally do not believe that is good for the economy or for how well our state functions. This is the most Republican state in the nation, the last problem we have is too many government workers or people paid too well. Every new Republican governor finds places to "reduce government." They eliminate departments, cut staff, rearrange things. We are bare bones and state employees, especially those on the front lines, the kindergarten and math teachers, the adjunct professors, food stamp screeners, child protection workers and budget analysts work hard for the pay they get. This won't be easy.

If we cut jobs, unemployment rises more than its current record rate. If we pay families less, some will qualify for food stamps. They have to eat and pay rent and child care and heat and gas and electricity. Hopefully we will give some of them with families food stamps. Those are federal funds we have been stingy with. Our state's laws are different from any other state's. We make people lose everything before we make sure they are able to eat. Its called an "asset test." You can't own anything, just one car, not two, if you or your kids are hungry and need help for a bit. That may be something we can change. I know we need to.

How will our economy recover if families and businesses have to hit the very bottom of crisis before they get help? The deeper they go into crisis, the harder to recover.

Idahoans are rugged and independent. We also, especially in the small towns and older neighborhoods know each other. We need to know each other even in the suburbs. We need to watch out for our neighbors, make sure they are OK. I have something to give still. I'm buying things at locally owned stores and giving to the food bank and homeless shelter. I know i could do more. It is that kind of time. Over fences and in coffee shops, in senior centers and school yards, I think we better ask how it is going. Maybe over a conversation we can help each other out just a little bit and get through this.

Meanwhile, I have to head to the statehouse to vote on how to cut pay for thousands of Idahoans. Not a vote I want to make. There are better and worse ways to do this. May we do the least harm possible.

Visiting the Ladies

I walked into the House chairmen's suite Wednesday. I know "suite" sounds grand, but really it is a back corner area with cubicles where the Republican chairs of all the House Committees have their "offices."

Dressed different patterned plaid jackets and sitting in two matching floral print, high backed arm chairs, I found the two good Ladies from District 35, Lenore Barrett and JoAn Wood. Rep. Wood Chairs the house Transportation Committee and Rep. Barrett from my old home, Custer County, Chairs the Local Government Committee. They looked elegant in the chairs, talking.

The two were sharing memories from the great depression. JoAn was just a girl but remembers licking the ration stamps and sticking them on the little cards. You needed full cards and money to buy your rations. They talked about the rations of sugar, shoes and gas.

The conversation led to box stores and the little local stores in their communities going out of business now.

This is not an every day scene, but it is. JoAn is the legislature's longest serving member. What she has seen and heard would fill books. Yet I realize even she remembers only echoes of the last time the economy took such a loss. We are in unknown waters trying to decide what of state government we need to fund and what we can do without.

This could be as bad as it gets. Or it might not be. The not knowing is what makes me cautious. Those who feel confident about a quick recovery may not agonize so much. But some of us will. This legislative session is just beginning. There is lots more to be seen. Lot's more struggling over conflicting realities, conflicting images of what's possible.

Unlike in the 30's we have a social welfare system. We are built to keep our nation's people from hunger. As long as we each remain generous, as long as we grow enough food in our collective American farm lands and can get our nation down from the endless war to a place of relative peace, we can survive anything. That's what I believe.

Often at Ease

The statehouse was empty when I made my way through the snow and dark to the doors this morning. Several times this week I've been dead tired but not able to sleep. This week is the deadline for us to finalize and turn in our legislation. I find myself drafting new language and working out problems in half sleep.

Most the day, the floor of the Senate tends to be sparsely populated. We will call a "Bless you!" across the room when someone sneezes, call out a good morning or good bye.

Even when we are in session with all 35 of us at our desks on the floor, the place is roomy. The ceiling is tall and as much less space as there is compared to the old Capitol building, we still rattle around pretty well.

We are, just this week, starting to really hear and debate bills. Yesterday actual debate started around educational neglect and a bill that was supposed to prevent people from saying their kids were being home schooled when no schooling was really going on. Rather than making sure they were providing educational content, the legislation instead created an exemption from the existing neglect laws for anyone who said they were home schooling their kids.

I was home schooled for a while. Many parents do a great job. A one point though the wrangler on our ranch was our teacher. I'm pretty sure my sister and I and the two LDS boys who often made up our "school" were a bit much of a hand full for her. We were lucky. We loved to write. I loved science and could still drill my dad for information on physics and biology.

Some kids are kept home with parents because they are being isolated intentionally. The bill would have made it law that, if their parents said they were being home schooled, that would be good enough. This is not about standardized testing or nosy government. Under this legislation no one could ever call them educationally neglected, even if they were never taught to read or given paper and pencil to work with.

It is so noticeable here in this old courtroom, now a Senate chamber, the feel of the debate is strikingly different from that in the bustling and chaotic House chambers across the hall. In every one of the last three days when things even started getting heated, leadership would call the body at ease and a little huddle of Democratic and Republican leaders, bill sponsors and others would gather. When they would disburse again, they'd have a plan for trying to work things out, amending the legislation or pulling it back to committee. In the House we would often battle for hours over things like this, there with the cameras on and a good portion of the 70 members standing up to their microphones red raced, colorful and lively.

Booze

There is a very large white warehouse somewhere in Idaho, owned by the state where all the liquor sold anywhere from Sandpoint to Bear Lake is stored. We had a presentation on it in the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee today. I'm guessing a few more trucks leave the loading bays bound for Sandpoint than for Bear Lake. But my point it that the state owns all this booze and for some reason that amuses me.

It is a good thing that the liquor dispensary thing amuses me because today I almost fell down the marble steps of the Capitol Annex, but instead dropped my brand new state computer which fell, broke into several pieces, and died. I picture some poor state employee getting not just the rumored 5% pay cut, but a pink slip too, just because I dropped my computer and something had to be cut out of the state budget to pay for a new one. That part does not amuse me. Things are that tight. And yes, I do know that legislative service's budget is separate from say the budget for some poor person working through applications for food stamps, and separate even from someone out at the liquor dispensary loading Jim Beam.

Believe me, I'm not the only one who worries and needs amusement. The beer and wine industry is grim about the prospect of an increase in beer and wine taxes this year. Such a tax increase I'd always heard was supposed to cover mental health and substance abuse services in the state. But today someone mentioned the funds going to education. I'm hoping they mean just for this year... Many of my conservative friends in the legislature, for good reason I think, like to know that there is some "nexus" or relationship between a tax and what it is used for. I'll reserve judgement until I see the bill.

There is one more thing booze-related that amused me lately. It was a nice party. A Birthday party for one of my colleagues in one of the Senate Committee rooms. There was endless cake and soda and even some kids. There was also wine.

Sure, that might not seem all that surprising, wine at a birthday party. But this was in the statehouse. OK the temporary statehouse. In all my five sessions as a legislator I've never seen beer or wine in the statehouse. I've heard the stories about the old days and the booze cabinets in the walls and the parties and drinking with lobbyists. But I've understood we've gone dry under the dome since then.

I do hear rumor that there was a reception in the Governor's office in the Old Capitol with wine not so long ago, but I wasn't invited, so this party and wine in the committee room was novel and impressive. I had a glass. I even took photos. Sorry, I'm not going to share them. I'm afraid I won't get invited again. And just having them amuses me.

And you know I need some amusement. I broke a state computer and have spent the last four weeks watching the state economy do as my laptop did today, falling precipitously through thin and uncharted air.

Deck Chairs

When the great boat was going down and an iceberg was ripping a hole in its new metal skin, I imagine those deck chairs, the ones that would have been wooden and heavy. Or perhaps there were none there on the deck of the Titanic because this was the North Atlantic and there was ice in the water and surely in the air.

In Health & Welfare Committee last week, we were visited by Blue Cross, one of our state's two largest insurers, in fact it is now the one the state now contracts with to provide insurance to most of Idaho's 17,000 or so state employees.

Blue Cross went to great lengths to show that spending more money on health care did not produce better quality health care. It is a point I would have appreciated coming from them had they bothered to mention how a health care system run by insurance companies creates a level of unpredictability and complexity never seen in the history of medicine world-wide.

Daily, the cost of American health increases because we as a nation and state government allow insurance companies to set their own rates. We let them decide what gets covered and what does not. We let these companies control and then change randomly who may treat whom and how much will be paid to those who provide care, based on who they are providing it to and whether that person is newly sick or has been sick with this same condition for a long time.

Imagine being a doctor and trying to figure out who and how much to bill for a colonoscopy. If the patient has insurance you get paid X. If they do not it is more. If the condition was pre-existing the insurance company might not pay, so you bill and work to get payment from the patient. Not only do you have to know the rules for every insurer, but you have to know that the rules can change at any time. So you may suddenly be designated as an out-of-network doctor or the procedure may no longer be covered so the company won't pay you and your patient, not knowing this, doesn't have the money to pay, so you don't get paid at all. Maybe, just maybe if you fight the insurance company you can get payment for the colonoscopy, or, if you use a different code on the paperwork, you will avoid the fight. In any case, before each procedure you need to make sure that the company will let you do what your patient needs. They may decide to pay for a lesser procedure or to make you wait until the problem is more severe, or until the person has moved to someone else's health plan.

Clearly you would never have time to see patients if you had to do all this yourself, so you hire one or two people to help with the paperwork. That is part of what makes what your colonoscopy (and your patient's insurance) cost more because not only do you have more staff to deal with the complexity, but all the insurance companies hire more staff to manage the complexity too.

So the Titanic screams ahead.

In the Senate Commerce Committee this week, Bill Deal, Director of the Department of Insurance, brought a rule, which is kind of like a law, to limit "discretionary clauses" in insurance plans. It is a modest change that means more than you might think. Read your policy sometime, if you have one (and I understand that one out of four of you have no insurance policy.) You will find statements something like this:

We agree to cover these things, but at our discretion we actually might not.

We promise to pay for this, but at our discretion we might choose not to.

We will cover medical care that costs this much unless, at our discretion, we decide we won't.

Bill's rule says you can't do this, at least not to ordinary people with individual plans who have no way to negotiate those bombs out of their policies. Small businesses beware you still have discretionary clauses in your policies.

The rule is progress. It is one deck chair a few feet to the left as the metal tears and the ship pitches starboard.

Like many, I've been spending a lot of time assessing what made our economy collapse. You can look back at reasons why wages are low and why still American companies could not survive manufacturing anything in the U.S. The cost of health care is clearly a factor.  U.S. companies have to pay for it while companies from countries with national health plans do not. It still weighs heavily on businesses trying to hang on while, all around them, businesses close and people lose incomes, buying slows and the chill sets in.

The icy waters froth and lap. Brilliant blue ice glows in darkness.

I plan this year to propose a bill to make companies tell small businesses the details of their health plans BEFORE the business signs on the dotted line. It says the insurance company can not change the plan in the middle of the contract.

Wooden legs scrape on a painted metal deck.

I look to President Obama to do this one thing for American business. Simplify this mess. Make it so no American family ever goes bankrupt or into deep debt to pay for needed medical care, ever again.

Sprinting

Each day I get up in the dark and walk through the sidewalks of some of Boise's oldest neighborhoods. I walk across State Street into downtown, the high buildings and stoplights and to the temporary statehouse to make it to our daily Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) meeting. Yesterday though I had a 7am human rights strategy meeting, ran downstairs to attend two committee meetings where we are done with approving agency rules and have started to hear bills. I walked quickly down state street to speak with Students at Boise High then almost ran back to the capitol to be part of a daily Health & Welfare lunch time Budget setting session. At 4pm I angled trough the legislative parking lot on foot to a reception for the Commission on Hispanic Affairs followed by racing to receptions and events for four other groups including the Idaho Sportsman's Caucus where we talked about ground water and wolves. At 11pm or so I walked back home in the dark and fell into bed. 

The pace this year is much faster. It is as if I'm sprinting to stay ahead of the bad news comming in from the tax commission about how Idahoans are doing... news on what we all are earning and paying taxes on and what we are spending and the state is collecting sales tax on. We feel in part what people all over the state are feeling, hesitation, serious losses, searching, scraping, rearranging, digging in.

The Economy

I'm told I've been mighty accurate in my estimations of the economy over the last five years I've served on tax and economic outlook committees in the Idaho legislature. These days we are doing a lot of urgent predicting. Predicting a volatile economy though is not the sort of thing that lends itself to strict formulas. In my humble opinion, the world is too complex for formula economics. That, I think, is why a lot of economists sound sort of odd right now, like they are describing a different world than the one we all live in. I think many are having trouble fitting all the factors into one calculator.

I might put it this way: we have created a hollow economy, one built on fiction, on money none of us have, money that is promised against debt large enough to consume more wages than we may ever earn in a life time. And that is just the personal debt. Medical expenses, balloon mortgages, loans for new more fuel efficient cars, home equity loans, and everything from groceries to nick knacks stacking up on credit cards. The average person owes more than $10,000 in personal debt. That's the average. That means most Americans own nothing, or that someone else owns most or all of what we live in, eat off of or sleep on. It is a disturbing thought. Who owns it and can they take it back?

As a nation we have waged two wars on trillions borrowed from other nations. Dollars that a President and previous Congress pretended we had to spend.

We have allowed American companies to manufacture everything elsewhere or to sell us nothing but goods entirely made by other countries. Our dollars flow out to buy little plastic plug-in fans that make rooms smell like lilacs, accent tables and CD holders made for pennies by children using whole forests of foreign trees. We pay dollars and companies owned by shareholders on several continents earn the rest. Our wages flow out of our communities for insurance premiums and every daily necessity, staying only in tiny portions for the hamburger flipper, the bus driver, the nurse, the teacher, the shop keeper. Local stores are shuttered and dark and their owners who once slaved for a decent wage, work now for people they don't know and will never meet, in a chain store selling goods from far, far away.

Our factories still stand there, and people who know how to run them are still alive because much of this has happened in the past eight years. We could fix this. Not by outlawing or taxing foreign imports but by recreating a sense of pride in what we make and a sense that our very survival depends on our buying what our communities produce.

Even our food now finds us from far, far away. We may grow carrots and produce milk or beans or flour, but it leaves the state so we can buy someone else's, paying then the cost of packaging, shipping, cooling and storing it all when we really don't need to.

We have grown soft and dependent because it was profitable for Texas to watch oil prices scrape the stratosphere now and then. Alternative energy research has been underfunded by Washington or bought wholesale by Mobil and Shell. We were allowed to become dependent on oil made by other countries which long have known exactly how to gouge us just long enough to start and then quell revolutions in fuel efficiency and electric vehicles. We all know oil prices will again be at $4 a gallon, but, by design, we don't know when.

And then there is how we let banks play dice with debt. With bad debt. How we let a loan become a Las Vegas game worth 50 times anything material that was ever attached to it. We let insurance companies and investment firms pretend that one dollar was worth $50 and created fifty trillion in fake value or "derivatives" that inflated everything like a giant stay-puff marsh-mellow.

You know how a marsh-mellow turns into a weightless crisp black shell when it hits a flame?

Well, our economy is a crisp black shell and we are all sitting on the surface of it. This is just my opinion, but I think we'd better start filling it with something, making something to fill it with. We can, as a nation. Not that long ago we did. And whatever we make will form a lattice-like scaffold inside the burnt shell and the dollars we spend to buy the things we make will be like the bricks that turn that lattice scaffold into a solid place.

We can't wait for government help to come because there isn't quite enough real money in the world economy to bring back the whole sticky stay-puff that was our economy.

Things will get worse before they get better. And the stimulus will keep state governments from raising taxes and may help us prepare to be a bit more independent. But more important than that is that we have the ability, each of us, to choose to buy what we make. And those of us who are still doing OK can maybe think about what we can make that we or someone else made in our communities, one time, not so long ago.

And then we'd better start making that thing like our lives depended on it.