Just as the House was taking up the transportation bill today, the Senate was amending education bills. It's no coincidence that 11 House Democrats voted in favor of the transportation bill today, when only three supported a gas tax hike in the earlier go-rounds (four in the last one). "Our discomfort with raising taxes when you're slashing education and state agency budgets is the taxpayer gets hit on both sides," said House Assistant Minority Leader James Ruchti, D-Pocatello. "Today was the culmination of efforts to make sure that we provide more money to education, and that some of these bad bills, or at least bad aspects of bills, were eliminated."

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