Ever Onward Podcast

Idaho’s Place in America with Congressman Mike Simpson | Ever Onward - Ep. 78

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 78

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As America moves fast and politics grow louder, Idaho holds steady—grounded in natural beauty, personal responsibility, and a deep connection to the land. Few people understand that better than Congressman Mike Simpson, who has spent over two decades bringing Idaho’s voice to the national stage.

Simpson’s journey from small-town dentist to influential lawmaker reveals the human side of long-term public service—where conviction meets endurance. With disarming candor, he shares personal struggles, including becoming “kind of bionic” after multiple joint replacements and a remarkable 100-pound weight loss journey that began when complications impacted his ability to taste. Yet through it all, Simpson’s commitment to Idaho’s people and priorities has never faltered.

Now serving as Chairman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, Simpson speaks to some of the most pressing issues facing the West: securing fair pay for wildland firefighters, co-sponsoring the Public Lands in Public Hands Act to block federal land sell-offs, confronting the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis, and advancing energy independence in collaboration with leaders like Secretary Burgum and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

He also offers a rare behind-the-scenes perspective on how Congress has changed during his tenure. “You see members of Congress doing things they would have never done 20 years ago,” he reflects, noting how the disappearance of moderates has made thoughtful governance harder—especially in moments that demand it most. Still, he remains committed to working across the aisle on real solutions, including budget reforms to address what he calls “the biggest existential threat to our country”: the $37 trillion national debt.

Throughout the conversation, Simpson demonstrates what principled leadership looks like—rooted in place, driven by service, and focused on impact over headlines. His fierce defense of public lands (“People live in Idaho because we love our public lands”) and unwavering advocacy for the people he represents mark him as a rare kind of public servant in today’s political environment.

If you’re looking for a grounded, thoughtful voice on the future of Idaho—and the nation—this episode offers both clarity and conviction from someone who’s still in the arena, doing the work.

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Speaker 1:

Today on the Around Word podcast we have Congressman Mike Simpson. Mike is an unbelievable statesman. Has been serving the people of Idaho in Congress in Washington DC on his 14th term. We are so excited to get caught up with Mike, a good friend. Mike began as a dentist in Eastern Idaho, in Blackfoot. Born in Oakley, idaho, he served for 12 years in the Idaho State Legislature before being elected to Congress. Can't wait to catch up with Mike and hear about everything going on in Washington DC.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for being on, mike. Oh, yeah, thanks, I didn't know you did the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Well, we've been doing it too long. It's been like five years. Seriously, Can't believe I haven't had you on in five years.

Speaker 2:

Why didn't I know that?

Speaker 1:

Well, you're a hard guy to schedule With Nikki. No, I'm just kidding. No, we've done it a while. When I ran for governor I got done and thought, man, it would be cool to tell all these. There's great stories in Idaho of kind of average, just people that do extraordinary things. So the first year we kind of did that. And then Bill Whitaker, you know Bill. Bill was my co-host for a while but he travels the world so much that that was a little hard.

Speaker 2:

And then the last two years, we't he up in uh whitefish or somewhere now? Yes, he, I saw him at some event and I hadn't seen him in a long time and he said we're up just off one of the lakes, or whatever he says. We've got a beautiful place up there. He invited me to come up and spend some time with him and stuff he's.

Speaker 1:

He's an amazing guy, yeah it really is so how you been Good, been good. How's your last time I was with you? You were hobbling around a little bit on your hip, did it it's.

Speaker 2:

I'm at that age where I'm kind of bionic. Now I've had both knees, the hip, they did surgery on my neck and stuff. Then my neck started flaring up a couple of weeks ago or a ago, I guess it just was killing me, and so my neurosurgeon here. I had to go back to boise or to dc and they hit, hooked me up with a pain specialist, you know pain relief stuff. They gave me some injections in the neck and put me on celebrex and stuff and it's been okay since then. But just weird shit happens to you when you get old. You know, mike, I know.

Speaker 2:

This is what always bugs me is your skin gets so thin that you bump it into a table like this and all of a sudden you've got a bruise there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I know I'm right there with you.

Speaker 2:

But other than that I'm doing fine.

Speaker 1:

That's great.

Speaker 2:

You look good. Thank you, you look great. The good thing is when they started on my knees, so I had surgery for different ones for each knee, the hip, the neck. I was under for all this and then they did carpal tunnel and all this kind of stuff. My taste buds just went to hell and the endocrinologist in D in DC told me that one of the side effects of general anesthetic they use every one but one, he said is that it can affect your taste buds, he said it doesn't happen very often and it almost always comes back. It's been six years now and food just tastes like crap. I have to force myself to eat something and consequently I've gone from a high of 270 and I was down to 171 yesterday 100 pounds.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100 pounds over the last five or six years.

Speaker 1:

Wow, you look great, feel better actually. You look really really good. Good, that's great Boy, you've been busy, just got a little, just a little bit going on.

Speaker 2:

A little crazy. Things are going crazy in Washington, but that's okay, it's. People are upset about the way Trump and Doge are doing some of the things and I've looked at it and we've known that our debt. We've got to get it under control and head in the right direction. For years and we had Simpson-Bowles Commission, which was members of the House, senate, private sector people got together for about nine months and discussed ideas and stuff. You know how many of their ideas became law Zero.

Speaker 1:

But really good ideas. By the way, yeah, I remember reading that stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, good ideas and stuff, but zero of them became law and then Steny Hoyer, the minority leader at the time in the House, and me formed the Go Big Coalition in the House to kind of do the same thing. Out of all the recommendations we had, zero became law. It may be that the only way you could do this is to come in and dramatically do it like Doge and Trump have done. It's disruptive and everything else. And Elon Musk has actually told us, said listen, we're going to screw up, we're going to make mistakes. We just need to know when we do so we can correct them and stuff like that. But it may be the only way that you could actually reduce the size of government and get after the waste and abuse and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I was stunned. A lot of these things we don't know anything about.

Speaker 2:

Members of Congress, I was stunned when I found out that they keep all personnel records paper form in a mine. It's called Iron Mine and Elon was told the limitation is you can only fire a maximum of 10,000 people a month. And he said, why is that? And they said because we keep their records in a mine, an actual mine, and the elevator can only make that many trips up and down each month. So that's the limiting factor. And he said to him he said so, why don't you digitalize this stuff? And they said oh, we got money two years ago to start digitalizing. He said how's that going? He says a B. He says you're giving yourselves a B. He said no, we're at a letter B in two years. So it does take the private sector, yeah, and while it's different than government, you can use business principles in government and that's what they're trying to do. I think yeah.

Speaker 1:

For a guy like you. Well, first of had, I had russ on not too long ago and then you know, you know, jim rish is my, my buddy now. Yeah, we farm together oh do you really and ranch together. So I get, I get to see him or talk to him almost every day, yeah, and I just love him. But you talk to we. We have some incredible leadership back there right now and the committees that we're chairing yeah, one that you're chairing the power that our little state yields back in Congress right now is pretty impressive. Speak to that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Look at our delegation. We're a delegation of only four. We've got Crapo in charge of the Finance Committee, jim in charge of the Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, at the end of this term I just learned this morning he will have been chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, at the end of this term, I just learned this morning he will have been chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee twice as long as Frank Church was. Yeah, so I mean that's a pretty powerful position. I'm on the chair of the Interior Committee, on the Energy and Water Committee that I used to chair, and on the Labor, health and Human Services Committee, and Russ is on Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources.

Speaker 2:

So we're spread out good and pretty influential delegation, I think.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you guys work together pretty well. Yeah, yeah we do Talk about the changes there. Since you've been there, you've had a storied career, buddy. I was reading your bio getting ready for this and and I knew a lot of it, but, um you, you've been back there for 14. This is my 14th term, 14th term in washington, yep, and and talk a little bit about the changes changes in politics in general, just how things you know, one of the people interact.

Speaker 2:

One of the biggest changes that I've noticed I don't know how to say this right, but it's the disrespect so many people have for the institution. You see members of Congress doing things that they would have never done 20 years ago. They'd have been censored and kicked out of Congress if they did some of the things. But you hear some of the speeches on the floor and stuff like that and it gets way too partisan. And the problem is is that those people that are the problem solvers, if you will, the ones that are in the middle more or less.

Speaker 2:

When I came, the Democrats had 70 members in what was called a Blue Dog Coalition and that was the conservative Democrats and we worked with them a lot. I voted for one of their budgets one year because I thought it was better than our budget and stuff. So there was across the aisle conversations and talk and working together and that kind of stuff. There are no Blue Dog Democrats now because they've either been beaten in primaries or decided not to run again by more extreme people. Same things happen on our side and so the sides are becoming more and more separated and there's not that base in the middle. That brings some sense to the stuff we do and I think that's the biggest change I've seen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it seems well for you. Just the partisan nature of everything. Yeah, everything that comes up right Makes it hard to do the business of the country right. Yep, it really does, and you see that difference as you've watched. Absolutely. What about the interpersonal relationships? Have they changed over the years too?

Speaker 2:

as people, it has to some degree. I would say the people that I hang around with has probably gotten smaller because our caucus has gotten more to the right and stuff and you look at the Freedom Caucus. My challenge with them is that I don't disagree with what they're trying to do. They're trying to get our fiscal house in order and I think it's the right thing to do. Problem is they have no idea of how to do it. They have no strategy of how to do it and they think that closing down the government is a legitimate policy objective. I don't think it is.

Speaker 2:

I've never seen a time when closing down the government is good politics or good policy, and so we have differences more in strategy than we do everything else, and that was 90% of the debate of trying to get their reconciliation bill done. They wanted some other things. They just have no idea about how to get there, and so I don't hang around with them a lot. Some of them I do. But the members across the aisle I still have friends over there that I talk to and work with. Shelly Pingree, who is the ranking member on Interior, we're good friends. Steny Hoyer and I are still good friends and stuff, so we have those relations, but they're not as many as there used to be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, socially. Who was I talking to? I think Jim, someone was telling me that. Oh no, maybe it was Butch. Butch was telling me that back in the day there was a lot of interaction, families spent time with families and people spent time with people, and he said, when people started coming home, as much the interaction and the friendships and the bonds that kind of sometimes would carry the day on issues is just different.

Speaker 2:

I think it's the biggest problem we have. I had a guy who was a member of Congress that we got a job for in the Department of Agriculture. Ralph Harding was a congressman from Idaho Democrat Pretty surprising now. He was a good friend. He was actually one of my dad's dental patients and he wanted a job in the Bush administration when Bush got elected and we helped him get a job in the Department of Agriculture and stuff. So I talked to him quite a bit but he said when he got elected almost every member moved their family back to Washington because Congress only paid for travel home about three times a year, so you'd come home for the 4th of July and Christmas or whatever you know.

Speaker 2:

Now you have your own member's account and you can spend it how you want to, with some limitations and stuff, but most members come home every weekend With me. That's too many airplane flights, that's about nine hours from door to door and so I don't do it every weekend, but it's still a lot of coming home. But when you had your families out there and nobody moves their families out there now, but they used to move their families out there that means you went to other kids' baseball games and barbecues and things and you interacted members from both parties and stuff and so you got to know each other and you and I can disagree vehemently on an issue, but it's hard for me, if I know you and your wife and your kids, to start calling you names on the floor or something like that. So there was a lot more respect in that happening. I think Butch is absolutely right that that's gone away because members fly home every weekend and I wish it wasn't that way, because we do need to, and there have been attempts to try to, you know, have dinners with members of the other party and that kind of stuff, and those have always kind of fallen through and never, never really got to know each other.

Speaker 2:

Like cause, you go to one of these dinners and then you're talking politics and you try to get to know people personally. When I first got to Congress I said I want to, I want to get to know every other member, and so I had my staff start setting up 15-minute meetings with members that I'd just go over and say Hi, I'm Mike Simpson, I'm from Idaho, I used to be a dentist, served in the legislature, didn't want to talk about issues or anything like that, I just wanted to get to know them. I wanted to get to know what their background was and stuff. And that was probably the best thing I ever did, because I got to know other people that I could talk to on the floor and if there was an issue I knew who I could go talk to on the other side of the aisle and stuff and work with, but none of that happens anymore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know, when I think of you, I think of the word statesman, that's nice. But think about that. Think about what it means to be a statesman and over time, yeah, and that's what you've been, mike. Well, I appreciate that and I look at the world we live in now and you've been there pre-iPhone social media. It seems like a lot of members of Congress on both sides. There's the social media shock and awe say something crazy, do something crazy, and we need more statesmen that are there to serve the people.

Speaker 2:

Well, I appreciate that. I've had people in Iowa say, well, why don't I see you on TV every night, like Jim Jordan or something like that? And I'll say to them you know, I could be on TV every single night if I wanted to, and they'll go. Really. I said, yeah, all I got to do is go say something really, really stupid, and I guarantee it'll make the news. I try to stay off the news as much as I can and just do my job, and I think there's too many people that are, and it's somewhat natural. I won't say it's completely foreign to me, but there's too many people that their whole goal is to get reelected. My goal is to do what's best for Idaho and for the country and if I get reelected, I get reelected. But if you can't defend it, you shouldn't do it. So that's kind of my goal.

Speaker 2:

And when you have a two-year cycle, you're always in an election, you're always up for re-election, right? It starts the day after the last election.

Speaker 1:

So I think it does drive some behavior right, Because it is something you're always thinking about? Oh, absolutely, it drives some behavior, but I think you've been able to. I've watched you the whole time. I've known you Just stand up for the things that are best for Idaho, for our families, for our people, for our environment. You just always seem to be the statesman on the issues and I love that about you.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate that, thank you With the Trump administration back there now the big beautiful bill just passed, right? Yeah, by one vote. Yep by. Yeah, by one vote.

Speaker 2:

Yep by one vote and one person was asleep and missed the vote. He would have voted for it, so technically we had two votes.

Speaker 1:

Technically two Tell us a little bit about it and then tell us a little bit about what you think is going to happen in the Senate.

Speaker 2:

Well, first of all, I try not to predict what's going to happen to the Senate, but in the House, all of the committees. They have instructions in the budget resolution that go find this many dollars in savings and you know virtually every authorizing committee has to go do that. They had all-night sessions. They worked their rear ends off to get their bills out and stuff to meet the goals that the budget committee had sent. Then they send them back to the budget committee and they coalesce them into the one big, beautiful bill and it has some provisions in there that worry me.

Speaker 2:

It has some provisions that are absolutely essential for the country. The biggest thing is it started off as we've got to extend the Trump tax cuts from 2017, because if we don't, it's an automatic 24% increase in taxes across this country. And if you're going to address the budget deficit, some people have said how can you talk about cutting taxes or extending these tax cuts when we have this big deficit? The way you address the deficit and the way we balance the budget in 96, I think it was when Clinton and Newt Gingrich-.

Speaker 2:

It's been a while now, yeah, but they didn't slash and burn spending. What they did is got the economy growing, and when the economy grows we get more revenue into the federal government, and in fact they had so much coming in they didn't know what to do with all of it. And the problem was, if you get more revenue than your annual budget, there's a tendency to spend it and grow government, and we need to reverse that, and so the tax cuts were vitally important. But then there's a lot of other provisions in there where they had to find savings from waste, fraud and abuse in a variety of programs, and there is a lot of that going on that needs to be reformed.

Speaker 2:

People suggest that the Democrats are saying that we are trying to cut people off of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. Nobody's Social Security is going to get touched. If anybody thinks that I would vote to cut Social Security, they don't know. My 98-year-old mother, I wouldn't dare go home. So that's not going to happen and we're not proposing that.

Speaker 2:

On Medicare and Medicaid, what they're trying to do is cut the waste, fraud and abuse. They're trying to cut illegals off the rolls that are there and people you know they said there was like I can't remember the number. It was like over 3 million people on Social Security that are above the age of 130. Yeah, and what Musk told us is we don't know if any of those people are actually getting paychecks from social security. So there might be a few, but it's not the vast majority of them.

Speaker 2:

The problem is that you qualify for other programs like unemployment and other things. They check to make sure that you have a social security number. And if you have a social security number, that's as far as it goes. And the problem is he says, your technology. What he said is your technology sucks because the computers don't talk to each other and all this kind of stuff. So if we can eliminate some of that stuff, we can get most of this money out of waste, fraud and abuse and that kind of stuff. And I'm kind of I don't know you, being a doctor, I don't know what you think about Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again proposals. I like the fact that we're looking at some of the food additives that we have and all that kind of stuff, some of the things I got in a little discussion with him about fluoride on our hearing.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting. Yeah, it is. It's interesting, yeah, it is. Well, first of all, I'm as Western, like ER doc Neanderthal. Yeah, it bleeds. Put pressure bone sticking out, put it back in. Start CPR, basic medicine. I am a basic medicine guy, so we're pretty black and white in the way we see the world, the way we fix things right. I've listened to a lot in the last couple of years. I've really tried to pay more attention to a lot of the wellness and whole body stuff and I do listen, I think when Obamacare passed. I remember when it passed Yep, and you remember when Biden whispers in the ear of Obama this is a big, big F and deal right.

Speaker 1:

And I remember half of my partners kind of freaking out. You know just, this is going to be the greatest thing ever. And I remember sitting in our office having a little group chat with about five of us saying this is going to screw things up Because it didn't go far enough. Either we needed to have, you know, a privatized system and a federal system of insurance or we needed to keep government out of the middle. And you look at what's happened since Obamacare, the layers of bureaucracy. I'm going to get to the point here. You look at PBMs and what they have done to the cost of drugs. You look at all of the layers, everyone like, if you go back 20 years ago, what's the layers between a physician and a patient now? And it's insane, what's gone on? So all this bureaucracy has been created. Well, in the middle of all that, there's just money. I mean the hospital association, the pharmaceutical companies, everyone's got all this money, so do? I think that money influences healthcare Absolutely 100%. And I think a lot of things that he talks about are accurate. I think that you look at the way the drug companies do their deal.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I was a victim of that. I remember when I trained. I tell this story I don't tell it very often, but it bothers me when I was in residency so I was in residency in the 90s there was this big push by the pharmaceutical companies, the people that made Norco, hydrocodone, right, right, percocet, oxycodone, and they would come into the ER. They would take you on golf trips. You would come in sometimes and you'd have a new putter You'd have, like you know, I was down in Tucson, arizona, in training and I'd have a whole stack of Pro-V1s and I'm like, oh, and there was this nice note from the drug rep telling me that and they would put studies, stacks of studies that said that as doctors we're not treating pain well enough and we should be sending everyone home with 40 to 60 Percocet after an ankle sprain. I mean, I lived it right.

Speaker 1:

Then I moved to Boise. I'm in Boise, idaho, and I still remember it was a nice guy, former NFL player. He would come in. I did night shifts. He'd come in every night and here's some more Pro-V1s Can I take you? Hey, I looked at your record. You're not prescribing enough Vicodin. So that happened. I can't deny it happened, because it happened to me and guess what? I was thinking I'm not treating pain well enough, so I started prescribing more pain medicine. So I was part of this problem that happened, and so I'm always careful.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of opinions and a lot of really opinionated people on a lot of things, and I think it's always good to step back and say, okay, what is the truth? If you can get the filters of dollars out of the way and I think for vaccines, I think for some of the food stuff he talks about, I think the food industry. You look at just refined sugars and what it's done to America. You look at our obesity rates. You look at any chronic diseases that we have compared to the rest of the world. There's something to it. Yeah, there is. So I really appreciate the world. There's something to it. Yeah, there is. I really appreciate the fact that he's looking at it. Now do I think some of this stuff sounds kooky to an ER doc? Yeah, some of it sounds like a little kooky.

Speaker 2:

But you look at the amount of additives we put in our food versus, as an example, what they do in Europe and stuff I mean the list that we put in things you can get a loaf of bread today that'll stay fresh on your shelf for like two months. You know what I mean. It's crazy, that's right, and I got no problem with them looking at it and saying are all these things safe? Are they really beneficial to us or not?

Speaker 2:

I remember I got in trouble with pharma because I was one who said we ought to negotiate drug prices from the start. The federal government is the biggest drug purchaser in the country and when you can go to foreign countries and they actually will sell these drugs to Germany under cost under what it costs to produce it, because they can get the benefit back from the United States because they overcharge, I love the fact that Trump came in and said listen, we're going to pay the same thing that foreign countries do. We're not going to start paying you. All this and I know it made the pharma companies go nuts and stuff, but that's, I think, a very important move. And I thought if you lived in Minnesota and you go to Canada every other day and you have a prescription, you had to be able to fill it in Canada, as long as they have an FDA sort of approval process.

Speaker 1:

Is it not one of the things that's got to get you is the irony of the political sides of things nowadays. I think of my grandparents staunch both sides. I grew up in Magna, utah. Both grandpas worked for Kennecott Copper Mine. Their fathers worked for the Copper Mine. They were blue-collar Democrats yeah, socially very conservative, but they were Democrats. Oh yeah, a lot of those people were FDR Democrats FDR Democrats. They were very much FDR Democrats.

Speaker 1:

But if you think about who fights for some of this stuff nowadays the fact that you've got Kennedy doing what he's doing for the Republican Party going after big business Is that weird or what? And getting crap from the Democrats, every one of these issues. It's like people have lost their minds on what core values even meant to anyone. And I think if you stripped all that away at some point and said, hey, is it a good thing that we have our foods and our medicines and everything more studied, that we don't let big business take advantage for the dollar, that we have our foods and our medicines and everything more studied, that we don't let big business take advantage for the dollar, that we protect people, I think people would say yes on both sides.

Speaker 2:

I think there's a great deal of support for what Kennedy is his vision, what he's trying to do, while there is like I have a problem with his fluoride stuff. They took fluoride. They banned fluoride from pediatric drops, you know, and that's when it's really important. But the CDC the day they banned it I was reading their press release and it happened to be the day Kennedy was testifying for our committee and Kennedy agreed with the statement by the CDC and it said we need to eliminate fluoride because it can affect your biosystem, because it kills bacteria, just like it kills bacteria to prevent tooth decay. That's not how fluoride works. Fluoride works by strengthening your enamel, not by killing the bacteria and stuff. At one time they tried. Why don't we put penicillin in toothpaste? Well, that killed the bacteria, but it let all the other things grow that were bad. So you know we've done more studies on things like that, but I agree with what he's trying to do overall.

Speaker 2:

I was riding up in the elevator with Steny Hoyer, who is a good friend of mine, to the hearing with JFK and I says well, we get to go listen to your man, jfk, and he looked at me and says he's yours now. But some exciting things are happening and it is disruptive and people get nervous and all that kind of stuff. I'm a little nervous of what they're trying to do with wildfire fighting, trying to move it from the Forest Service over to the Department of Interior. I want to know what's their justification. What are they trying to accomplish? Why are they doing that? But we don't have any of that yet from the budget request, so we're going to invest in that kind of stuff and see what's happening.

Speaker 1:

Well, my good friend's waiting to be for his appointment, mike Boron, or his confirmation, and yeah, he can't wait to get to work, but it takes a while. He's now saying it may be end of the summer. It takes a while. You don't realize until you have someone going through it. It takes a while it takes.

Speaker 2:

I actually think this is just my personal opinion. I think the Senate confirms too many positions. If you are the press secretary for the undersecretary of this, you know you got to get confirmed. That's exaggeration, but they I think they spend too much time doing confirmations and stuff. Top people got no problem with that, but uh, borin has to get confirmed. Uh, and of course we got the new head of the chief of the forest services is uh, from idaho and stuff. So Tom Schultz and he's doing a great job. So I have some connections there I can talk to about what's going on and stuff. But I look forward to Mike getting confirmed too and I think he'll do a good job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he's he's, he's excited. I don't know why he's so excited. He has a pretty good life. I was going to say why did you want to?

Speaker 2:

I asked him that why did you want to do this? I asked Elon Musk this when several of us were in a meeting with him. I said why are you doing this? I said you could be on a yacht in the Caribbean drinking Mai Tais, just enjoying yourself. You know, he says. I thought about that, he said, but I came to the conclusion that this is the last chance we've got to save this country and if we don't get headed in the right direction, this country is going down and all of us are going down with.

Speaker 1:

So that's why I'm doing it, which is a pretty big sacrifice on his part. Yeah, Do you think? Do you think we ever get to a budget, to we're headed in the right direction? Do?

Speaker 2:

you think that happens. The, the reconciliation bill heads us in the right direction. It's not everything everybody wanted and I've always told people it's not really where you stand. It's what direction you're headed that counts, and I think we're headed in the right direction with that, and there will be more coming up in the next year's budget and that kind of stuff. If you look at what we're trying to appropriate money for next year.

Speaker 2:

I was just talking to my staff this morning from the Interior Committee about the cuts that we're going to do in Interior and where we're going to make them and stuff. Unfortunately, it's a lot of programs that a lot of people like. But you got to ask yourself is it necessary? Not when you're sitting there with a $37 trillion debt. I mean, that's the biggest existential threat to our country is our debt. It's not China, it's not Iran, it's not Russia, it's our debt. And if we don't get that under control and headed in the right direction and we will, but it'll take some work and it will take some pain that people will cry about, and I understand that fully. I really do.

Speaker 1:

Well, as a taxpayer and just a citizen, it's nice that it's being talked about too. I remember well Democrats had they had control of our government from the executive branch for 16 out of 20 years. Right, yeah, Right. And you don't hear about the deficit one time when they're in. But during Trump's first presidency you didn't hear it either. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2:

Very much.

Speaker 1:

I mean you look at the chances then to try to address a problem and then it would have been eight years ago, yeah, so it's really nice that we're addressing it. It's a big issue, it's a hard thing, but that's what we need, right? I?

Speaker 2:

think really what you're seeing out of this administration. You'll notice Trump came in and on day one started signing executive orders and everything else and a lot of those executive orders I agree with. He learned from his four years that he was president, that he was under fire every day for impeachment, for this or that or whatever, and false stories out there and actually put out by the Clinton campaign. I mean he lived that for four years and I think then he had four years off to sit and say what would I do differently? And he knows that the first two years, especially the first year, maximum, but the first two years, especially the first year maximum. But the first two years is the time you've got to get something done. And so that's why I think he hit the ground running and started appointing these people, and I'm kind of excited about his cabinet appointees too. People were going, ah, these are people we don't know and whatever. That's okay. There's not a better secretary of state than Marco Rubio. This guy knows what he's doing. I love him. My Cuban friends are good people. He's been strong. He's been very, very strong.

Speaker 2:

But Lee Zeldin at EPA. He's going to take some real hits in his budget, but he's going to do what the EPA is directed to do. My first term as chairman of this interior committee, the first five years there, we cut the EPA's budget by 17% over that period of time and I thought we were doing pretty good. They want to really cut the EPA's budget. But there's a lot of people say well, why do you do these state and local tribal grants and stuff that help water systems and sewer systems and local communities? Because they're enforcing federal law. So federal government helps with the funding of that to some degree and so we'll be doing some of that. But they had an EPA museum Sound kind of weird, An EPA museum set up and I can't remember how many million it cost to operate and everything.

Speaker 1:

I'm just thinking of some of my farmer friends.

Speaker 2:

Do you know how many people came in last year? 2,000. That's like what? Four, five, six a day came in to visit this EPA museum. And I don't know of anybody that comes to Washington that says, hey, let's go visit the Washington Monument, no, let's go to the EPA museum. Oh, that's good. To the EPA Museum. But he cut that out and we're finding that kind of stuff throughout government and I think it took eyes from outside to look at it to tell us what was going on. To some degree, that's great.

Speaker 1:

Hey, tell me a little bit about your heritage in growing up. And your dad was a dentist Yep, he inspired you to be one. And then you got into politics, kind of took off, but talk a little bit. One of the things I've one of the reasons I still do this podcast thing is I really like hearing about the why behind people. Sure, and for you, who was it that inspired you at a young age to be what you've become?

Speaker 2:

Well, you know I was. We lived in Oakley, idaho. I was born in Burley because my mother had to go to the hospital in Burley and I had to go along. So I was born in Burley and then we lived in California for a few years while dad was in Korea and when he got out of the service we moved to Blackfoot, idaho. They grew up in Oakley, idaho, and that's where they got engaged and got married and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

And my dad was a dentist and my uncle was a dentist. His brother and I went to college at Utah State and I was a political science major because I loved the study of politics, not necessarily being a bureaucrat and working for government I don't mean that in a negative term, but I didn't want to work for the government, but I liked the policy decisions and stuff. But then what do you do with a political science degree? And I liked the biological sciences. So I switched to the pre-dentistry and went to dental school in St Louis and graduated and came back and set up practice with my dad and my uncle and practiced with them for until my dad retired and then my uncle and I and then my cousin joined us, so we had three dentists there at the time, but after I was practicing for about three, I graduated in 77 from dental school and I was practicing for about three years.

Speaker 2:

I picked up the morning news one day, the Blackfoot paper, and it said that there were two seats open on the Blackfoot city council and only one person had filed and the deadline was the next day. And so I thought, wow, this is a way to get into politics, you know. So I went down and gotten 50 signatures and signed up seven to five other people and that meant you had to go to debates and stuff and I, like most Americans, the number one fear we have is speaking in public. So I'm kind of do I really want to do this? Do I want to go to the League of Women Voters debate and all that kind of stuff? So I but I ran and I we knew who would get the most votes and I came in second. I got two,016 votes and the guy in third place got 1,008. So I won by eight votes.

Speaker 2:

So if me and my wife, my dad and my brother and my mother had voted the other way, I would have never run again, because having public speaking was the worst thing in the world for me. But I got elected, served four years on the city council and a state legislator from my area was retiring and I talked to him about it and stuff and the part-time legislature in Idaho. I could actually come over here and I got elected there to the state legislature. But I could come over and work in the state legislature, go home Friday afternoon and practice, practice Saturday, take care of the state hospital patients on Sunday and then come back over. So I did that for like 14 years and became Speaker of the House. Never thought I'd be Speaker of the House, but-.

Speaker 1:

Did you enjoy your time as Speaker? I did.

Speaker 2:

That's the best job I've ever had. The Speaker of the House is an amazing. It takes you a while to realize what authorities you have. You got a lot of Speaker of the House. It didn't take Moira long yeah, some people learn quicker than I do but it was.

Speaker 2:

I was going to either retire or I was going to run for governor and Dirk Kempthorne at that time decided to come back and run for governor and Crapo moved from the House seat that I have over to the Senate, so it opened up the second congressional district. And I said to my wife I said you know that all those years you worked to put me through dental school and now we took time to build a practice. We've got a practice. If we wanted to go to Hawaii next week, we could pack up and go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks. You know if that's what we wanted to do. And I said how would you like to give that all up? Decrease your salary by about half, and every two years you got to ask people to send you back.

Speaker 2:

And she said this surprised me Not coming from her, though she's a pretty smart woman. She said I've watched you over the last several years, those three months of the year in Boise during the legislative session, in your home, working on weekends and stuff, said you're busier than heck. And then those times where you're just practicing dentistry, the nine months of the year says you're happier those three months when you're busier. And so she said let's go try it. So we ran for Congress and been here ever since. That's how I got involved, but it was I can't say it was a specific issue or something like that that drove me to do it.

Speaker 1:

I liked the debate in the politics of Do you remember the first time you went back there, the first time after you'd been elected, and walking in, did the grandeur of it all hit you?

Speaker 2:

I always say, if I ever, usually we go over to the Capitol from my office on the tunnels and stuff, but if I walk outside and I walk over to the Capitol, if I don't get goosebumps I shouldn't be there. It's amazing. I can remember the first time I was walking up the staircase around by the house chamber and the marble there is kind of dished out, old, and I said, man, this is the people's house, why don't they replace these marbles, these marble steps and stuff? And then I thought to myself think of the people that have walked up and down here. Abraham Lincoln, davy Crockett, I mean you know, the heroes of this country have walked up and down these steps. Okay, I get it, I know why they don't, but it is a fascinating place and it is. I love giving tours of the Capitol or a staff giving tours, and people are amazed. It's a beautiful place.

Speaker 2:

Everybody hates Washington DC. Every politician says you know I'm leaving there when I retire, I'm coming back to Idaho. I'm not going to be one of those people that stays in DC, but I got to tell you in all honesty, the one thing I will regret is that I haven't taken the time to take full advantage of living there and stuff. I'm kind of a civil war freak and the civil war happened within a hundred miles of DC, you know, and I need to get out and visit some of those, some of those places out. I haven't been out to Antietam yet or any of those places, and so I want to do those things before I ultimately retire, but it's an amazing place.

Speaker 1:

I did want to hit a couple of things you're working on that are near and dear to your heart. Firefighter pay Talk about that.

Speaker 2:

Firefighters were getting paid about $11 an hour. They were, I mean, you made. They could make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's in California than they could fighting wildfires. And so two years ago three years ago now, when the Democrats were in charge, they increased wildfire fighting pay and we all agreed with it. The problem problem was is it wasn't authorized. They just did it in the appropriation bill for a year. So then we took over and last year I tried to get it authorized and stuff. We kept the pay level that had been set and our resources committee said, no, that's an appropriate, that's a authorizing issue and we want to, we want to do it through the authorizing committee. So I said, okay, we'll just do it through the authorizing committee. So I said, okay, we'll just do it this one year and then you guys can do it. Well, they didn't do anything. So last year in the appropriation bill we both authorized and made it permanent to increase the wildfire fighting pay, and they need to. It's the only way you can retain and pay these people what's necessary, because they put their lives on the line out there it is. If you've ever been out to one of these wildfires and see what they do, it's amazing. So they have a permanent pay increase. We're going to have to increase it again this year to keep it up, but we got to stay competitive.

Speaker 2:

One of the challenges that they're proposing here in this bill is changing wildfire fighting pay or wildfire fighters from the forest service to the department of interior. Now the department of interior has some wildfire fighting with blm, but they want to change all the forest service. The problem with that is and so I've got to do a lot of talking with them about why they want to do that 50 of the forest service employees have red cards, which means they are qualified to fight wildfires, and a lot of them do. Are you going to lose those people? So there's some questions we have. So there's a lot of things that the administration has proposed that may be the right thing, but we just don't have the justifications yet of where we're headed and why we're doing it and stuff and stuff. So I suspect these first budgets will reflect the priorities of the president, but not necessarily go in the full tilt of what they're proposing in some of these things, like wildfires.

Speaker 1:

Well, some of these things are incredibly complicated issues that you got to drill down on and find out what the unintended consequences of policy are right and sometimes with government that's part of the deal right. What were the unintended consequences? And always require some changing and fixing right. Another one I saw on your list the missing and murdered, endogenous women crisis have you ever heard of that?

Speaker 2:

No, I was sitting watching Idaho reports public television, by the way, a public television program. I was watching Idaho reports and they had a woman on there from the Nez Perce tribe who was involved in the murdered and missing indigenous women program. We lose 6,000 men and women and children, indigenous women, indians. We lose 6,000 a year that go murdered and missing. And I'm sitting there listening to that and saying I've been on this Interior Committee that funds Indians, indian country, for years and I've never heard that and so I started asking questions about it and we held a hearing last year and what you find out is the biggest challenge is the jurisdictional issues.

Speaker 2:

The FBI has jurisdiction on reservations and stuff. The reservation has jurisdiction. Sometimes the counties and state have jurisdiction just outside the boundaries and stuff. We had one woman testify that as a teenage girl she was kidnapped, held for I think it was four or five days, raped and repeatedly and stuff and then dumped just outside the reservation. So the question is, who has jurisdiction? She couldn't identify the cabin that she was held in. So do the tribes have jurisdiction because she's indigenous? Do the county? Does the FBI? And today that guy never got punished. She knows who it is. She is on the council and one of her constituents is the guy that raped and murdered her or raped and abused her and stuff.

Speaker 2:

We've got to address this, and so we're putting a lot of money into Indian law enforcement. I mean, you look at a lot of these reservations that are big as the state of Connecticut and they have two officers on call at any given time and when they get a domestic violence call, it might be an hour before they can get there. Well then it's over. So we've got to do more in Indian country to address this really serious problem, and if the American people knew that this is twice as many people as we lost on 9-11, and it happens every year I think they would be outraged and want us to do something, and that's what we're going to do.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you. Thanks for doing that and bringing to light. One of the things that I've loved about you and today's no different is you get pretty passionate about things that matter to Idahoans. I am Right, I am, that's what you want in your statesman.

Speaker 2:

It's the greatest state in the world.

Speaker 1:

Right, yep, you want someone that's looking out for our people and fighting for us. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

One of the issues that just came up was the sale of public lands. Yeah, a congressman from Nevada sought to transfer nearly a half million acres in Nevada to state counties, private industry that would then sell it off and stuff like that. And there was 11,000 acres in Utah no-transcript. And there are people who think we should turn over all the lands to the state to let them sell off and stuff like that. But what I've told people is people live in Idaho because we love our public lands. If you want to go to your favorite fishing hole or hunting grounds, I don't want access blocked. Our goal is to make sure that we have access and that the federal government, the Forest Service and the BLM are good neighbors and are doing what they should be doing. I don't think people of Idaho want to sell off our public lands. We've got greater response to that than almost anything that we've done.

Speaker 1:

Well said and fiercely defended. The folks that truly understand the value of public lands I'm sure some of your. I mean there's a reason why this place is so great and it's the ability we have to go explore and do all the things we do.

Speaker 2:

Several years ago, when we were trying to pay for I think it was Hurricane Katrina, a Texas congressman who was a friend of mine on the Appropriations Committee said hey, I know how we can pay for this Hurricane Katrina disaster relief. I said how's that? She says we need to sell off all those public lands in the West. And I looked at him you know Texas doesn't have any public lands and I said listen. I said people live in Idaho because we love our public lands, so why don't you go take care of Texas? I'll take care of Idaho. But we remained friends.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Just kind of closing up here. What does Idaho mean to you?

Speaker 2:

It's the place I want to live. I love our mountains, our forests, our rivers, our lakes. My goal is, once I decide to retire and I have a full summer, I'm going to travel every road in Idaho Because there's a lot of places that I go. Wow, I haven't been there before. I mean, it's a big state and it's a beautiful country. Whether it's North Idaho, southeast or Southwest Idaho, it's uniquely different. Somebody tells me that they go up to Coeur d'Alene. I said, well, you need to come down to Sun Valley too. That's a good place too, and I live in Potato Country, which is kind of a high plains desert. But in an hour and a half I can be in Jackson Hole In an hour and a half I can be in Yellowstone, swan Valley.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's just gorgeous country and the people of idaho are. I love them, they are understanding, they are opinionated, uh, and they let you know what, what they're thinking and stuff which is good for a representative to know, uh, so I I appreciate that, yeah you, as I reminisce, uh, I would never do what I did.

Speaker 1:

I dipped my toe in politics for a short time. That once was enough for me, but I don't regret the year and a half being on the road and traveling. We hit almost every town and city at least a couple times over that time period, and it's unbelievable. It is the state, is geographically the natural resources we have the rivers and streams and lakes but it's the people. It is the people. It's the people in all those and very different We've got.

Speaker 2:

North.

Speaker 1:

Idaho that is fiercely kind of independent in their thing, and you've got Eastern Idaho, which is the same, and then down west we're different. Here you got we're all the way over the border of Oregon and Washington County and you come over to Canyon.

Speaker 2:

County. Oregon County is wanting to become Idaho.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a wonderful place with diverse ideas. Yeah, it is, but they share in that same heritage of hard work, taking care of each other.

Speaker 2:

Yep, they share in that same heritage of of hard work taking care of each other. Yep, you know, we were always worried that if californians move here they're going to try and change our politics and stuff, that they'd move to salmon idaho and say where is your opera, you know, and that kind of stuff. But what's happened is actually, if you look at north idaho, most of the people migrating there are coming from washington and oregon. People in migrating there are coming from Washington and Oregon. People in the Treasure Valley are coming from California and people in Southeast Idaho, surprisingly, are coming from Utah and they've actually made the state more conservative because it's the people from California that are sick and tired of the rules and regulations and taxes of California that have come up here to be more free. So, as a general rule, they made.

Speaker 2:

Idaho more conservative.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they give us hell in development, though, because they come here and then they're like, hey, we don't want anything else to happen here, yeah, so they oppose everything, yeah that's true Everything.

Speaker 2:

That is true Everything, anyway. And we get to go to a couple ribbon cuttings all over here for new businesses and stuff. Idaho's economy is moving. Brad Little has done a fantastic job, I think, keeping Idaho moving forward and stuff, and I think it's going to grow and that's going to be a challenge, but it's a challenge we welcome.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much. Thanks for your leadership, Thanks for your constant example and your friendship. It means the world to me. We love having you take care of us and look out for us back there.

Speaker 2:

Well as I told you after your failed gubernatorial election, which you know, I think you would have been a great governor and stuff, but I told you to stay involved because we needed your voice in this, and so you have, and this podcast and other things, and I appreciate that you were very kind to me when I ran.

Speaker 1:

It meant a lot to me. All right, love you, thanks, thank you. Thank you, thanks everybody.