Standing up for Idahoans
Your Idaho House Republican Caucus continues to stand up for you and your rights. That means we’re ensuring that you’re always considered “essential,” confirming your right to gather, protecting the Idaho Constitution, and adding checks and balances on state agencies. Many of you have reached out to us with concerns about the restrictions you’re facing right now. We want to assure you that we are working on those burdensome mandates, which are imposed by health orders and ordinances, not the state emergency declaration.
“It is the health order that restricts the number of people that can go watch your kids’ extracurricular activities. It is the health order that restricts your movement,” Speaker of the House Scott Bedke said. “It was the health order that quarantined healthy people. Those are the things we think need to be worked on. And any of the mask mandates have been the product of city ordinance.”
Working for Vaccine Access
We can promise that we will never force you to get a Coronavirus vaccine, but we need a more efficient vaccine rollout so that if Idahoans choose to get the shot, they can. Right now, Idaho is receiving about 25,000 first vaccine doses a week, but it’s taking too long to make them available to the people that want them. We appreciate the efforts from the Governor’s office to make the process more transparent. With that transparency, we have been able to identify issues with the rollout and can now focus on fixing them more immediately. We are working to find solutions and we encourage state agencies, our fellow legislators across the rotunda, and the Executive Branch to do the same. However, we need to stress vaccination is a choice and never a mandate for Idahoans.
Improving the Idaho Patient Act
Monday, your Idaho House of Representatives voted unanimously to improve the Idaho Patient Act. House Bill 42 provides for a time extension to the requirements for extraordinary collection actions on medical debts. This applies to all goods and services provided to a patient prior to July 1, 2021. The bill now heads to the Senate.
Allocating Federal Relief
Caucus members are working to allocate roughly $900 million in federal relief. Because of how the Governor recommended the budgeting of this money, it is going through a full vetting process. As always, we want to make sure we spend your tax dollars wisely and efficiently, but our budgeters are also working on ways to potentially speed up the process for allocating these federal funds.
“They are working through a schedule so I do know they are reviewing to see if they can move anything at a faster speed,” said Majority Caucus Chair Rep. Megan Blanksma.
Keep Updated
You can learn more about all the legislation being debated by our Caucus members. Just check the House Reading Calendar found at the link below.
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