BOISE – Idaho Democrats unveiled a multipoint plan Thursday to expand economic activities, invest in education and strengthen government accountability.

House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston, said the Creating Opportunity plan is based on input from Idaho taxpayers and business owners.

“We’re taking our direction from the people,” he said during a news conference at the Statehouse. “They told us we should give children the best education possible and create opportunity. They want young people to have a chance to raise their children in Idaho – which means turning our low-wage economy around. Businesses told us they need a trained workforce, and communities told us they need modern infrastructure.”

The plan focuses on six key areas, including education, wages, government accountability, quality of life, health care and voting rights. It includes such provisions as raising the minimum wage to $9.75 over three years, creating an Office of the Inspector General to investigate fraud and waste in state government, funding an early childhood education pilot program and authorizing the Health Idaho Medicaid expansion plan.

In support of the plan, Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, said Democrats will submit about 17 bills this session.

Some, however, have already been sidelined. For example, Senate State Affairs Committee Chairman Curt McKenzie, R-Nampa, has indicated he won’t hold a hearing on the minimum wage bill because he doesn’t think it has Republican support. Similarly, the Senate Health and Welfare Committee took no action Tuesday on Moscow Sen. Dan Schmidt’s Medicaid expansion bills.

Nevertheless, Stennett said Democrats will “just keep pushing the will of the people.”

“We can’t keep having 99 percent of the people in the room telling the Legislature they want to move forward (with Medicaid expansion) and then not even vote on the bill,” she said. The Creating Opportunity plan “is a way of telling the Legislature how we need to manage ourselves. On many of the topics we feel strongly about they (Republicans) won’t even have a conversation, let alone a vote. That’s just not serving the people.”

If people look at this plan and agree it represents what’s important to them, Rusche said, then perhaps the Legislature can move forward with some of the proposals.

“We think there’s a dearth of leadership, of reaching out to people, finding out what they really want for their families and communities and then articulating a plan,” he said. “Unless we articulate a vision for the future, we’ll get nowhere.”