Tonight, February 10th, Democrat legislators will meet at South Junior High in Boise to talk about a bad jobs bill, called iJobs. I knew that the Democrats, notorious posers, would put forth a fake jobs bill, so I found a Republican bill that would actually create jobs. It’s too bad that Republicans are so inept at self-promotion. But, Republican jobs bills are written for the people not fame and glory. I found a proposal and did an interview with the writer, Representative Phil Hart.
A summary of my findings follows:
Representative Hart has a plan that will create one to two thousand jobs in Idaho, according to the Commerce Department. His plan centers around expanding an existing refinery in Salmon to handle production from a silver mine in Bunker Hill. All silver mined in Idaho must currently be sent overseas for processing, because Idaho has maxed out the production capacity of current facilities.
His plan also includes remediation of a state-owned smelter pond, which contains $100 million dollars of Indium, a key element in the production of solar panels. The EPA built the pond 18 years ago with a 20-year liner.
Under this jobs bill, $40 million in taxes from the Indium cleanup would go directly to connecting the Bunker Hill mine to rail lines, saving wear and tear on local roads. This is a big advantage of the plan. Northern Idaho roads can’t stand over use, especially when all the stimulus money and ITD funds go to southwest Idaho.
The bill sends the signal that Idaho is mining friendly and serious about saving the environment from government. Finally we have a legislator with concrete plans to breathe life into the languishing Idaho economy.
