If you watch our House floor session each morning at from about 10 AM to noon on line or on public TV, you might have watched some pretty disturbing debate on the grocery tax on Thursday. The 70 of us debated a bill to offer a $30 rebate on your income tax which would climb each year by $10 until it reaches $100. It was one of those moments at which I cringed to be debating along side some of my colleagues on an issue I opposed for completely different reasons.
Phil Hart was debating against the bill and began by expressing concerns about how people, especially low income people would spend the rebate, which would be as much as $50 even the first year if your income were low enough. He went on for some time about "illegal aliens" and must have said that phrase literally 15 times in only a few minutes. It seems that the proponents of the credit didn’t want to take the tax off food because illegal aliens and tourists in Sun Valley might benefit from the tax cut.
I am supposing some think it doesn’t get any scarier to Republican law makers than to contemplate a few women in furs and Lycra and some unfortunate person whose visa has expired while her husband’s has not and she chooses to stay in Idaho rather than leaving the kids. Phil did not dwell on the tourists, only those whose "illegal culture" means they have a lot of kids.
Phil mentioned some odd statistic about how people spent relief money from Katrina. It wasn’t flattering either and I’m guessing was only part of the real story, omitting the people who paid for caskets and house repairs, clothes to replace molded ones soaked in sewage and long gone. I wondered if Phil would ever feel comfortable if people analyzed how he spent his money. I listened and he went on.
Next he talked about Idaho’s tribes and I cannot for the life of me remember how they were connected because I was on my phone to our Democratic Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet downstairs telling her I was going to stand up and object. She said she’d do it. And so the debate came back to food tax rebates.
I know well that not every undocumented immigrant in Idaho is Latino and not every person living in New Orleans is black. Still, later I found Phil at the shooting range and with a smile and pointed humor, gave him a big whack on the arm, explaining that using negative examples ranging from undocumented immigrants to Katrina to Idaho’s tribes was debate chock full of pretty dreadful racist innuendo. He said we all see things from different points of view. I agreed. He smiled sheepishly and said he didn’t mean it. I actually believe he didn’t. I also expect he might be more thoughful next time.