# Idaho Pulse Podcast with Ron Nate 2-28-25

**Bob Neugebauer:** Welcome to idahopulse.org. This is your host, tea party, Bob, and today we have one of our favorite guests, Ron Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. So let me introduce our guest, Ron Nate, and, as they say, let's get on with the show. Ron. Welcome again to the idahopulst.org. We would like to start off our conversation this morning with some of the hot topics you've mentioned to me, so why don't you take off, and let's see where we go.

**Ron Nate:** All right, Bob. Always great to be on. I appreciate you and your team mainly Bob and Mike here. And so that's great. Yeah, I think the big news of the week since the last time we talked is that school choice has been sitting on the governor's desk, and we were wondering, what's he going to do with it? Well, lo and behold, Donald trump give some praise to our governor for passing school choice in Idaho, and so the Governor still has the bill on his desk. What is he going to do? What is he going to do? Is he going to offend all the trumpers that he actually goes opposite of what trump has just praised him for. Anyway, he ended up signing the bill yesterday, so it was a very big day for Idaho. I would argue it was a historic day for Idaho that the 1st real school choice legislation that we've had has been passed, and I think some credit goes to Representative Wendy Horman and Senator Lori den Hartog for the work they did on getting House Bill 93 to look like it did, and to get it across both chambers, and to ultimately have the Governor sign it. Now that being said, it's not a perfect school choice bill, but it's something to build a foundation on. To build education, freedom in Idaho. There are some things we need to add to it. We need to make it more universal. We need to remove any caps on it. We need to make it so. There's not a means test so that families of all income levels can access it. We also need to remove some things like testing or parental surveys, or whatever is being required of of private education or home schools. Home schools are not regulated under this, but we need to be on guard to make sure that nothing ever touches the homeschool population. And but it all in all. It's a good day, $5,000, tax credit available for families who do not send their kids to public schools and the rationale behind this is that families need education, freedom. public education doesn't fit all all children's needs. The best, and families should not have to pay double to educate their kids outside the public education system. So if they're.

**Bob Neugebauer:** I, you know I'm encouraged by the bill. My big concern is as we go on, you know, through this this year, next year, whatever when we, when it gets implemented, that they're going to attempt to make changes to it that will place more restrictions on it rather than leave it. Be this free flowing bill as we have right now, and my other concern is, will they put at some point restrictions on homeschooling, and and have requirements.

**Ron Nate:** Yes, and we are vigilantly on guard against that. And so, if anything, we are going to do our very level best here at Iff, that we work hard for school choice, we're going to work hard to make sure that it is only becomes freer over time, less cumbersome on families and and more beneficial for families. So absolutely we are. We are watching that like a hawk, and we will be fighting for for families. By the way, when a family does choose to opt out of the public education system and choose this private system, some people are saying they'll get $5,000. It's like a handout. Well, they are taking $13,000 of burden out of the public education system who doesn't have to educate their kid anymore. So on net, even if it looked like a pure handout, which it doesn't. But even if it did, it would be saving Idaho taxpayers about $8,000 a kid.

**Bob Neugebauer:** That's substantial, absolutely. That is very substantial. But I would only think that if they know they're saving $8,000 a kid, they'll increase the school budget next year.

**Ron Nate:** It's hard to make the argument that you need to increase the school budget when enrollment is declining.

**Bob Neugebauer:** I don't disagree, but I've seen strange things happen in this state.

**Ron Nate:** I actually saw it on the floor. Once, when I was there they were. They were saying that some of the college enrollments were down. Therefore they needed more budget, and I asked the question of the sponsor, I go, hey? If enrollments were up, would you ask for less budget? Good question. She says, no, we'll ask for more budget. And I go. Okay. So anytime enrollment changes, you need more budget, whether it's up or down. That was essentially the conclusion.

**Bob Neugebauer:** That was the end of the bill.

**Ron Nate:** No, no, no, that was that was just a little fly on the windscreen. There they still RAM that thing through.

**Bob Neugebauer:** It's amazing, you know, every time I used to go down to the Idaho Legislature there was always a surprise waiting for me. I just never knew where it was going to be usually in the backside.

**Bob Neugebauer:** So you're pretty well pleased with this bill. I can.

**Ron Nate:** I am. I think it.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Breakthrough.

**Ron Nate:** If nothing else happens, this legislative session. And, by the way, it would be great if nothing else did happen. This legislative session. I think this would be a monumental success, and so I am happy that we finally got that done. We have been leapfrogged by other States for years, who have gotten more school choice, Arizona, West Virginia, Florida, and we've slipped. We were at Number 3 in terms of education freedom just based on charter schools there for a while, but we've slipped all the way down to 17 or 18. But now we're going to jump back into the top 10 for education, freedom and we still have more work to do, though we need to make it more substantial, less regulated, more available.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Just a question. You're pretty much up on on the statistics with the education. And do you see that the Charter schools and the religious schools run at a higher level in in scores than the the State, run. Public schools.

**Ron Nate:** It's well documented that private schools, home schools on average, I'm not saying every single student, but on average outperform public schools, and usually by a lot charter schools which are still part of the public school system. But charter schools do give parents flexibility in choosing the types of charter schools, types of education. The charter schools also outdo the run of the mill public school, and so anytime you increase education, freedom by some measurable amount, it results in better outcomes for students, better outcomes for families. So.

**Bob Neugebauer:** So the question has to be, why did we wait so long to put a bill like this through? And I have my own opinion as to why it took so long, and and I'm sure you're of the same opinion, and I think it has to do with unions.

**Ron Nate:** Well, yeah, the unions are always going to fight against it, and actually to the detriment of those they're supposed to serve. Teachers benefit from school choice, but they are constantly propagandized. That school choice is bad for teachers, but it's not, it's good for them. And so it's the unions who are always against it, and also that we do not have a conservative legislature. We many legislators who ended up voting for this, did it with their arm twisted behind their back because they knew that school choice was becoming more and more of an electoral issue, and so they had to do it. They couldn't be on the wrong side on this anymore, because we're now holding them more accountable in election season.

**Bob Neugebauer:** You don't have to twist my arm to to see that's going on. I'm happy to see that going on.

**Ron Nate:** Yes, me too!

**Bob Neugebauer:** You know, it's the only time we ever seem to be able to get things done is when they know that it's an election issue.

**Ron Nate:** That's right. And so it's incumbent upon us to tell them that this is an election issue. Grocery tax repeal is an election issue. The legislative pay raise is an election issue. School choice is an election issue. Repealing Medicaid expansion, or at least holding it accountable, is an election issue, and we're going to make them front and center issues when the next primary comes along. And so I'll say it right now, far and wide, that legislators you better be working on the side of the people and not on the side of establishment or unions, or you're going to find yourself in a tough, primary race.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, I only hope that comes to fruition, because we do need to make some changes in legislature, and we need to get some more conservative people in there. When I look at your last report on the Freedom Foundation, on the voting of who's really conservative and who is not it? It's still is very, very awkward when you want to call Idaho a conservative state, because the numbers don't show that. And certainly we're not the reddest of the Red States.

**Ron Nate:** This is true, I mean Idaho has long been a the the reddest of the Red States or top of the Red States, but our legislature doesn't quite reflect that. And so accountability is important. We're watching. We're working on it. And we're helping. Legislators have the courage to vote the right way. Because it's what the people want.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, I did my job. I sent a letter to President Trump about Idaho and make sure he doesn't back somebody. That is not what we would call truly conservative.

**Ron Nate:** That's right.

**Bob Neugebauer:** See, we will see what happens.

**Ron Nate:** We will, we will. And so we're we're watching the bills, rating the bills as fairly and as honestly as we can, and then the legislators get to determine their own scores, and then the people get to hold the legislators accountable. Should they choose.

**Bob Neugebauer:** You know, and I've had this conversation with several other people. I think that the people of Idaho and I think a lot of it has to do with the migration of Californians and Washingtonians and Oregonians into our State that have helped make these people accountable. Our legislatures accountable because they're much more activists. then, I think the the more libertarian attitude of the basic Idahoan that's living in a rural community. In many cases.

**Ron Nate:** True. True, I agree. Yep. And so we, we have great opportunity. But we also have great peril if we don't get this right. And so I think we have the opportunity with our population here being by and large, conservative, to do some great things. But it does require action. And so. yeah, let's keep it going.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, you are a man of action. So where we where we are is going to be the action after we, now that we finish with the school choice, and that's on the docket and done.

**Ron Nate:** Well, I think this next week the spotlight turns to Medicaid expansion. There's a great bill in the Senate that holds Medicaid expansion accountable getting the improper payment rates to below 5%, making sure, able-bodied recipients are doing work because they should be doing work and capping the amount that can be on this expansion. I think I'll be good things. I mean. we were promised it was going to cost 400 million. It now costs 1.4 billion dollars. It's way out of line. And so we'll work on that. But I think we talked about that last week. I don't want to keep beating that dead horse.

**Ron Nate:** Can I ask you one question? Did they put a trigger mechanism in House Bill 138 does have a trigger mechanism and all it says, unless you get the inefficiencies out of this program, if you can't get it working right, then the program isn't worth having. And so that's all. It says. We should ask nothing more of government. If the program isn't working, it should go away. And so we just have simple metrics to make sure it's working right that it can't. You can't have improper payments. You can't have it going to people who don't deserve it. And it's it's basic. I guess. Medicaid 1. 0, 1 that if if you can't get it right, you should be killing.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, that's all well and good. But my fear is, as usual, a lot of these programs that they have that should go away like Lumi. And what happened to the health data exchange? Either they disappear into nothingness and nobody talks about it, or they continue on, and they suck a lot more of our tax dollars up. You know what I mean.

**Ron Nate:** Yep, for sure, for sure. Oh, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about, too. Oh, let me look it up really quick. Oh, dei shenanigans.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Oh, yeah.

**Ron Nate:** Do you? I don't know, if you remember this back last summer that it's been building up for years. This diversity, equity and inclusion, mentality, working ideology, working its way into higher education. It's frustrating for Idaho taxpayers to pay all this money to our universities, only to see them become indoctrination centers creating little woke Leftist students instead of doing the job of academic excellence. And so last summer, I mean, we've been reporting on it for years. Iff has been reporting on this for years that higher education has been infected by the Wokeness and Dei mentality. Well, finally, last year the Legislature, the leadership, decided to convene a Dei committee, and I kind of scoffed at it, saying, This is a hamster wheel. Just write the bill and do the right thing. But no, they wanted a committee to look at the issue over the fall and into the winter, and so they met 4 times. They had a committee of 8, 4 Senators, 4 legislators, and they came up with a Dei bill. Ben Taves has that bill that came out of that committee, and it's a good bill. But Senator Guthrie has taken it upon himself to say, I don't want to schedule a hearing for that. Nope, we're not going to do that, and so instead, get this. Guthrie goes to Bsu and talks to them about Dei, and comes up with a a Milquetoast Dei Bill that is mostly symbolic. No teeth. and I think Anton has signed on to it as well. And so they've introduced their their Dei Nothingness Bill. and the real bill that would reform. Higher education is getting shut down.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Is that bill? 1048, that you're talking about the real one.

**Ron Nate:** It's the one by taves I gosh! I had. I hesitate to commit.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Read it. And it's a pretty strong bill. Basically, it may actually have the possibility of a constitutional challenge.

**Ron Nate:** Well, that's good. I mean, we always skate on the edge of constitutional challenges when we're trying to do the right thing right.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Oh, absolutely. But I mean the amount of money that we're spending on this Dei 3.8 million dollars. That's a lot of bucks.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah, that's right. It is 1048. And if you go and look at the Co-sponsor list, there's 20 Senators signed on to this bill but one Senator Jim Guthrie thinks he knows better for the Senate than those 20 Senators and all the others who would vote for it. By the way 20 is enough to pass the thing.

**Bob Neugebauer:** By the way, he's the guy who wants to give the illegals driver's licenses, is he not?

**Ron Nate:** Oh, yeah, you know, it goes on and on and on with this guy. He wants to vote for tax increases. He wants to vote against anything good. He wants to hold bills in his drawer, and the abortion ban Bill sits in his drawer.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Is is this guy from Blaine County? Maybe.

**Ron Nate:** You would think he's he's from over in the Pocatello area.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Oh, boy!

**Ron Nate:** Oh, boy, that's exactly right. 1059 sits in his drawer. So we are. So the shenanigans are that you have the good bill that 8 Senators and Representatives worked on for over the months, and it's brought to him, and instead of just scheduling a hearing, he goes and runs his own bill with virtually no input, from any of these interested parties. And it's a shenanigan. And what are we going to get out of this more? The same.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, I'll tell you. You send me a copy of that bill that he's proposing. I guarantee I will get that on the air on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

**Ron Nate:** Oh, that sounds great. Yes, I will work on that. Yeah. So it's that's that's 1 of the most frustrating things about the legislature is, you're always running again up against this issue. That is, that the committee chairs think that they are mini governors, that they have veto power over anything. That's not the way this is supposed to work. So I've always tried to to break that system of saying, this is the way that you're supposed to support tradition and leadership bogus. You're supposed to do what's great for the people, not for leadership. And so we're going to work on that we're going to hold them responsible for it. If Dei dies or you get some bad bill coming out of this, it's all going to rest on Guthrie's shoulders, and so I hope he doesn't plan on running again, because it's going to be a tough reelection campaign.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Do you have any idea where little stands on this.

**Ron Nate:** Boy, that would be interesting. It'd be fun to put a bill on his desk, wouldn't it?

**Bob Neugebauer:** Oh, really.

**Ron Nate:** Because I know that he's. You know. these special interests, this higher education. I don't think he wants to offend them much. but at the same time this has burned us that Bsu, exercising Dei type policies. kicked the coffee shop off of campus, and you know what? Improperly so a jury and a judge ruled 4 million dollars against Bsu because they discriminated against the coffee shop because they held a different political view.

**Bob Neugebauer:** And they're still fighting it.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah, they're they're appealing it. That's Dei at work. And and is the Bsu officials going to have to pay the 4 million? No, who's going to pay it? It's going to be you, Bob, you you and all the taxpayers like you.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, that doesn't make me happy. I must tell you. I'm going to be writing a few more letters.

**Ron Nate:** Strongly worded letters.

**Ron Nate:** Yes, that's for sure. Okay? And so yeah, we'll watch those Dei shenanigans. So let's watch for Senate Bill 1048 I have one more issue to talk about. If you still have time.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Absolutely.

**Ron Nate:** Okay. I am part of a club for Growth Fellows Program Club. For growth is a very conservative organization. I think they're based in Virginia or whatever. But legislators belong to this. They do great work in terms of economic freedom. But I'm part of this fellows program. So I get to associate with other fellows from across the country. One of my good friends is a legislator from Maine. Her name is Laurel Libby. and so she's a representative in the main house, and this last week the spotlight shined on her because some news was made in Maine regarding her. What's going on in Maine is that they want to. You know Maine has a Democrat dominated legislature right now, and in Maine they allow boys to compete in women's sports. even at the high school level. And it's very frustrating because some girls who who want to be champions in their sport don't get that chance when they have to compete against boys who are pretending to be women. and they don't get scholarships to college based on their athletic performance when they're overshadowed by boys pretending to be women. And so this this representative from Maine, she pointed out. She she posted pictures of this boy who was 5th place in Boys pole vault.

**Bob Neugebauer:** I saw that.

**Ron Nate:** Placed metal, and then the next year, this boy he is, 1st place in women's pole, vaulting in the girls pole vaulting at the high school level in Maine, champion of the state. same same dude but different years. One year, boy, one year on the girls team. And suddenly. suddenly, he's a she champion. And so she posted that and saying, Look, this isn't fair to girls! And the Democrats in the main house filed a complaint against her, saying she violated rules by posting a picture of a child online in her Facebook post. And, by the way, this picture had been used many other places. She didn't go, and surreptitiously take a picture. She just borrowed the picture from news stories, or from from websites, or wherever, and put them together, and and made her post. So they invoked a rule against her. And you got to go watch this video. Just do a Youtube search for Representative Laurel. Libby got it on my computer right now. Well, maybe maybe your your great technician there, Mike, can can run it into your feed as as you guys publish this. But it shows her standing in front of the speaker, who is seated high above her. She's like the the Chinese person in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, right.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Absolutely. That's.

**Ron Nate:** In front of power. That's what she's doing. While he reads the verdict of this leftist legislature saying that she has violated this rule, and until she comes in compliance she will not be allowed to speak, to issues or to vote in the main House until she has apologized for making the post and satisfying the majority there. Well.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Is that kind of unusual that a simple majority can do this because this is a 70 to 75 vote. Normally they would have a 2 thirds vote for a censure like that, wouldn't they?

**Ron Nate:** No, in Idaho they can do a censure like that, too. They threatened to do it against a representative. When I was in there the Speaker of the House kicked Heather Scott off her committees once, and then 6 of us stood up in support of her until it was reversed. But this Democrat-led Legislature made that statement, and then I would encourage you to look up the video of her speech response on the floor. She was allowed to speak to the motion. and she kept getting interrupted because she wanted to talk about why she was doing this. It was to defend young girls who were being competed out of championships, and who were, you know, all their hard work in training was for nothing, because a boy could just come in and and steal their valor. And so every time she tried to say something like that, they'd shut her down. No, she needs to speak to the motion. But watch that speech. It's devastating. These are Democrats silencing a woman who is defending women's rights.

**Bob Neugebauer:** So tell me, how are they going to defend that when they lose 250 million dollars for their schools from Trump.

**Ron Nate:** I know this is what led to that trump statement against the Government.

**Bob Neugebauer:** This is sheer stupidity, as far as I'm concerned.

**Ron Nate:** It is, but I want to repeat what those Democrats in the main house were doing. They were silencing a woman who was trying to speak up for women's rights for girls who were being oppressed by boys in Maine.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Wouldn't she have a lawsuit that they should? She should file on constitutional freedom of speech.

**Ron Nate:** I would think so. She's an elected official, and the voice of her constituents has been taken away because Democrats don't like what they're hearing, and so she's a hero. You should watch the speech she gave. The last line is just devastating for her to say it's outrageous for them to try and silence her while there are yelling to silence her at that very moment. It's amazing.

**Bob Neugebauer:** You know, while I've got you on the subject, I need to ask you a question about House Bill 306 and 307.

**Ron Nate:** House Bill 306 and 307. Those are the ones that were proposed by Mike Moyle. Criminal libel. Yeah, he wants to make lying illegal exactly in order to. I mean criminal libel, that if you say something bad about a candidate or legislator, and that is either false or recklessly loose with the facts that it perpetuated a falsehood. Without you knowing it, you could be held for criminal liable, which is a hundred $1,000 fine potentially up to 5 years in prison, I think, was the deal.

**Bob Neugebauer:** It's a 5 year, yeah, something like that. But isn't this? And who's going to determine.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Secretary of State.

**Ron Nate:** By the way, isn't lying part of free speech, too?

**Bob Neugebauer:** So.

**Ron Nate:** And also nothing in the bill stops the candidate from lying about themselves, and I know they do, because I've seen candidates claim all sorts of conservative credentials when they're nothing close to that allowed to lie about themselves in their own positive way. But nobody's allowed to challenge them on it for fear of getting charged themselves.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, I do remember when Labrador was running for Governor the lies that were told in the last 2 weeks of that election about Labrador. and there was very little he could do about that. And that's 1 of the reasons little wound up with a plurality in that election.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah. Anybody who runs for office. You'll find out pretty quickly that your opponents are willing to lie about you, but as a good candidate. What you do is you make yourself very familiar with those in your district, so, no matter what lies are told about you, they know you better than the lies being told about you. And so when they're lying about me and my campaigns, people look at that and go. That's just bogus. He's not against education. He's a professor. He loves education, and so I mean, that's just part of running for office, and everyone who's run for office has thought that they've been lied against by their opponents or by opponent groups. And to put this into law to try. And you know this is well established law in America. That criminal, like libel, is not really enforceable under our constitutional rights.

**Bob Neugebauer:** So you don't see this bill actually having any opportunity to go through.

**Ron Nate:** I don't, but you know I've been surprised before. I think it speaks more about Mike Moyle and his very thin skin, and his, his his propensity to try and exact revenge on anyone who opposes him. I think he was very offended that he had an opponent, and somebody dared to support his opponent in a political race, and so he wants to strike back. But he strikes back in the worst way possible, exhibiting total ignorance for the constitution, and how this process is supposed to work. Every legislator should have an opponent, they should stand up and speak and defend their record. And Mike Moyle isn't any better of a legislator than any of the others. He doesn't deserve any special considerations, you know.

**Bob Neugebauer:** I'll tell you. There has been a tremendous amount of controversy on the radio talk shows about this. I brought this up the other day, and I will tell you. People were enraged about this.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah. And House Bill 307 is not unlike it. It's not a criminal thing, but it's like, if you're a candidate and you feel like somebody's lied about you. You can file a complaint with the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State is compelled to investigate it, including getting a response from the person who supposedly lied. And then the Secretary of State determines what the truth is, and posts it on their website. So they become a ministry of truth. It's just sort of this public display of a complaint and a response, and the Secretary of State's determination. How Orwellian is that.

**Bob Neugebauer:** No, I'm going to take out my 1984 book.

**Ron Nate:** It's exactly right. It's like, Oh, okay, we have determined that what you said about the candidate was not true. Your response was not very strong. The Secretary of State has deemed it that you have lied about a candidate. How ridiculous is that.

**Bob Neugebauer:** It's stupid, it really is stupid. And the point is is that I thought Mike was a lot smarter than this, and what he's shown me is that he has a very thin skin, and once again he has fallen off on the wrong side of the fence.

**Ron Nate:** That's right. Looked from man to pig and back to man again, and couldn't tell the difference. Yeah, it's so. Orwellian also, let's not forget about bills 308 and 309. These are changing campaign finance rules, upping the limits which might be a good thing, but also saying, If if your opponent spends enough money or opponent groups spend enough money against you suddenly, you'll have no campaign limits and no coordination limits, it's holding those who are in high dollar races to a different standard than everyone else. It's really a leadership protection program saying, Hey, you know what? If somebody spends a lot of money against you. You'll have no campaign limits, and if you have no campaign limits, you know what that becomes that becomes special interest funded campaigns who will dump tons of money to get their speaker in in office rather than the the next guy. And so it's an incumbency protection program. And it's disgusting. So House Bill 308 and 309. They should go down in flames just like the other 2.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Yeah, well, we have seen what's happened here in past history, especially in the gubernatorial races. And I'm talking about even in just the last 2 or 3 that I've been a part of. We've seen things like that happen where you got enough money you can pretty much win the election. And then again, if you can tell enough lies, it helps even more.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah. The answer to speech you don't like is more speech, not curtailing speech. Doesn't like something. He wants to shut everyone up and put their money, put their money away, but.

**Bob Neugebauer:** I've argued, this is totally unconstitutional. This is totally against the 1st amendment, and it needs to die.

**Ron Nate:** Needs to die. Yeah, I agree. So there you have it. I mean, we got some work to do on on killing those those bad campaign finance and speech laws. And because, you know, we're going into, we're finishing up this legislative session. We've got another month. Idaho Freedom Foundation will publish its freedom index, and you'll see the the raw truth about what your legislators actually do once in office and come April, you can see it@idahofreedom.org. That's my plug idahofreedom.org, and you can see that, and then we'll we'll be heading into another legislative session. But it'll be special because it'll start in January. It'll be a primary election year, and legislators behave differently when they have that election looming over them. Things get a little more sensitive, a lot more urgent. And they they want to look good. And we're going to hold the truth.

**Bob Neugebauer:** I need to ask you. I need to ask you one more question. How do you see the budget shaping up? Are we going to be over the 14 billion dollars mark, or will we come in under.

**Ron Nate:** We've grown by 55% in the last 5 years. We we're at 13.9 billion dollars. Now, when I was when I 1st got in the legislature we were, we were below. we were below 8 billion. And so we're we're we're like double in the last 10 years. It's it's outrageous growth. Some legislators have a plan to not vote for any growth in employment, any growth in federal funding or any growth beyond replacement items, no new programs, no new spending. And if they do that they will save Idaho a billion dollars. We'll end up at 12.9 billion, not 14.1 or 2 billion like the governor wants. And so it could be huge. We just need to encourage other legislators to take that lead and say, you know what? We're not going to vote for this government growth, and it's easier than ever to not vote for growth because they've already voted for the maintenance budgets which keep the lights on and keep the same employees. But you get to vote on the growth budget separately. and it's easy to vote against growth in education after you've already voted to fund education.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Do you think we're actually going to be able to get rid of any of the 189 agencies and sub agencies we currently have.

**Ron Nate:** No.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Oh, gosh! I'm so sorry to hear that, you know there's only 489 agencies in the Federal Government, and we have 189 here in Idaho, and we are one of the one of the smallest population states. It's amazing.

**Ron Nate:** Bob, what would we do without a Bean commission?

**Bob Neugebauer:** I really don't know.
**Ron Nate:** I really don't know either. I mean beans would suffer.

**Bob Neugebauer:** No, no, it's.

**Ron Nate:** Would you ever have another bean on your table?

**Bob Neugebauer:** No, no, it's almost as bad as listening to the glysopate commercials every 5 min on the radio which drive me absolutely crazy. And the unfortunate part is that most people don't understand how dangerous this particular chemical is.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah, I mean, you know, in a free economy, in a free society people have an incentive to look out for themselves when government steps in and says, we're going to protect the people, watch out because government will spend up your money, they will over, overregulate and over, involve themselves, and still not keep you safe.

**Ron Nate:** And so, yeah, I mean, does anyone feel safer after the covid thing, the Mrna, the masking, and all the stuff they required? Did they keep us safe? Or they did. They introduce other problems.

**Bob Neugebauer:** No, they made a lot of money, though.

**Ron Nate:** He sure did.

**Bob Neugebauer:** 100 million for the hospitals.

**Ron Nate:** Yeah, we keep getting taught over and over again that putting your trust in government is a fool's errand. But yet we keep being encouraged to do it again and again.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, I'm just hoping that I live long enough to see the change take place, because when I came here I thought it was pretty nice state, and that was 31 years ago, and it took about 11 years for me to figure out things aren't quite as I thought they were.

**Ron Nate:** Well, there's some beacons of freedom here. There's some good people in the Legislature. There's some good people working at places like the Idaho Freedom foundation and other organizations around the State trying to keep that light of liberty shining on everyone. And so I'm optimistic that we will prevail. But it takes education. It takes advocacy, and it takes a lot of work to do it, and we're up to the task. If we can't do it in Idaho, we can't do it anywhere in the Us. So we got to get it right here and set the example for the rest.

**Ron Nate:** And let's keep it going. Bob, your your work is very important. The Idaho pulse needs to shine a light on what's going on with these these little tyrants that we put in charge of government.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Well, I'll tell you what. I just recharged the batteries, so we're ready to go. We'll see how much damage we can do to these bills, these obscure bills that they keep bringing up because I'm tired of it. I want to see it change. I've spent my time down at the Legislature and and down at the State House, and I got tired of getting parking tickets when I had money in the meter, so they didn't like me going there.

**Ron Nate:** Lock arms and do it. One of the bills today was about small brewers.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Who are out of state, selling beer in in Idaho.

**Ron Nate:** Here. Here's here's a case in point. some. Some Idaho brewers are upset that they have out of State competition. and they said, it's hard to compete against them because they don't have to deal with the same regulations we do. We have to have our warehouses inspected. We have to meet these minimum standards. And so they came to the legislature and got some, some dopey legislators to agree that we need to put the same regulations on out of state producers. You have to have a warehouse. You have to have Idaho employees, and we have to inspect it and make sure everything's good. Well.

**Ron Nate:** isn't that dumb? Isn't that that we want to level the playing field for these Idaho producers who are overregulated, and the way we're going to level the playing field is to overregulate out of State producers, too. I am tired of that. If you want to level the playing field, don't up the regulations on some. How about remove the regulations on the ones who are overregulated? That's leveling the playing field. And that's a conservative approach.

**Bob Neugebauer:** Ron, that's too simple for them to understand. You know that? Right? Yeah, let's go back to the land board. And when when we were going to build all kinds of crazy things with our State land. When Otter was in in power, a brewery was one of the things they talked about. And then, of course, there was a storage unit program that they wanted to talk about. Yeah, I don't know where these legislators, or even our officials like our governors, come up with these crazy suggestions because they make absolutely no common sense. When you take a look at our constitution.

**Ron Nate:** Well, they're epitomes of Reagan's quote that if it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it, and if it stops moving, subsidize it. It's always a government answer.

**Bob Neugebauer:** That's unfortunate. I really like, I said. I've been fighting this battle for a long time, and so have you, and all I can say is, I appreciate everything you do and everything the Idaho Freedom Foundation does, and anything we can do to help you, as you'll notice. We did publish 4 of your articles in this last Gem State Patriot. We want to make sure words getting out.

**Ron Nate:** You're amazing. I appreciate that, and I appreciate everything you do. I'm looking forward to being on next week. I'll give you an update on the Medicaid Expansion Trigger Bill and anything else going on in the Idaho Capitol. So you know we're there, so you don't have to be.