Guest Columnist Idaho Senator Brian Lenney – Little Presence in Idaho: Where’s Our Governor?

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Governor Little’s in DC right now at a Trump event supporting the “one big beautiful bill.”

And his staff? They’re in the Idaho Capitol telling our legislature NOT TO conform to the tax cuts in that same bill.

You can’t make this up.

Maybe you’ve heard the news: Idaho’s got a budget crisis. We’re upside down and have to make serious cuts. But the governor won’t touch education spending. Nope. It’s a $5+ billion blob that just keeps growing while he flies to Washington for photo ops and his people contradict everything he claims to support back home.

Pick a lane. You’re either with Trump’s tax cuts or you’re not.

Here’s what I want to talk about. If we’re really in a budget crisis, why are we protecting every dollar of government education spending like it’s sacred? Why won’t anyone talk about the programs we could cut tomorrow?

Idaho Launch spends $77 million a year for free college. Yes, we’re paying for adult college education with taxpayer money. In a budget crisis, that should be one of the first things on the chopping block. Gone.

Or what about the “Idaho Career Ready Students” program? That was just created in 2023 (I voted against it). They sold it as a targeted $45 million one-time fund for rural career techincal programs. Four months later, schools requested $111 million. So, of course, the legislature topped it off with another $20 million in 2024 (I voted against that too):

Fast forward to 2026 and we’ve got $70 million committed across 140 proposals with $5 million in ongoing operational costs locked in forever. Even with Idaho facing a $555 million budget deficit (depending on who you ask) for FY 2027, this program is completely untouchable.

Why?

Because you can’t shut down welding labs that kids are already enrolled in without every rural superintendent showing up with students talking about how you’re killing their community’s workforce programs.

Once you create beneficiaries and build expectations, the spending becomes “permanent.”

This is exactly why I voted no. You don’t start programs you can’t sustain, and you definitely don’t start programs where demand will always exceed supply by 2-3x.

And then there’s Idaho Public Television.

The new education budget includes $4M ish for public TV. Yes, we’re funding television through the education budget. I was the only senator who voted against it last year:

Here’s just a sliver of the woke garbage you can find there:

Now those are just three programs I thought of this morning. Three places we could cut immediately and save nearly $100 million. There are many more like this.

But the governor refuses. His administration won’t even discuss it.

Here’s what kills me about this whole thing. We’re not broke. Idaho’s sitting on rainy day funds around $880 million right now. Buckets of money stashed away. Reserves that would make most states jealous (and we’re not in a recession. Idaho’s economy is strong. Revenue is still growing year over year).

So what crisis are we talking about exactly?

We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.

If we’ve got $880 million sitting in reserves, and we’re refusing to cut a single education program, and the governor’s staff is recommending we ignore Trump’s tax cuts? Then this isn’t a “budget crisis” – it’s a priorities problem.

The state government wants to keep growing. Keep spending. Keep every program running at full throttle. And they want Idaho families to keep footing the bill.

But I’d rather stabilize Idaho families than the Idaho government.

Education is the second biggest spending blob in Idaho’s budget. It keeps growing every year, more money, more programs, and more administration. But we’re not getting results that justify the cost.

Idaho Launch doesn’t make college affordable. It makes taxpayers fund other people’s degrees. The CTE program? Maybe it helps some kids but we’re choosing government programs over the people who fund them. Idaho Public Television? $4 million we’re spending through the education budget.

So Governor Little can keep doing his Trump cosplay thing in DC…

He can smile at the cameras and pretend he’s on board with tax cuts and fiscal conservatism. But back home, his administration is telling our legislature to reject the tax policy in the bill he’s supposedly supporting. And he refuses to cut a single dollar from education spending while calling it a budget crisis.

You can’t claim you’re with Trump while your staff kills his policies. You can’t claim there’s a budget crisis while refusing to cut spending. You can’t fund public television, Idaho Launch, Medicaid Expansion, and all kinds of other pet projects and pretend you’re serious about fiscal responsibility.

The math doesn’t work. The story doesn’t hold together. And the people paying attention are getting tired of the performance.

So what’s it going to be? Are we going to actually cut spending and give money back to families? Or are we going to keep pretending we support Trump’s agenda while doing the exact opposite in Idaho?

Because from where I’m sitting, watching the governor in DC while his staff undermines him at home, it looks like we’ve already made that choice.