Testimony: ‘We simply can’t afford a tax cut’

Donna Yule, executive director of the Idaho Public Employees Association, spoke against HB 563, the $35.7 million tax cut bill. “It seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility to pass any kind of tax relief or tax cut at this particular moment in Idaho’s history,” she said. She decried recent cuts in everything from Idaho’s Medicaid program to its ranks of state patrol officers on the road. “It seems it would be far more responsible to restore funding in many of the areas that have been cut in the past few years,” Yule said. “The Legislature has starved our state government so much in the past few years that things are getting pretty desperate. We simply can’t afford a tax cut.”