Fights for Idaho Values in Washington DC
Episode 4 Idaho Senator James Risch—Main Street Idaho Podcast Season 3
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From the rugged landscapes of Idaho to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., U.S. Senator James Risch has been a steadfast voice for Idahoans. With a career spanning local, state, and federal levels of government, Senator Risch brings a unique perspective to the challenges facing our state and nation.
In this week's podcast, we dive into a conversation with Senator Risch, exploring his approach to representing Idaho's interests on the national stage. Here are some key highlights from our discussion:
The importance of maintaining an Idaho-centric approach in Washington, with most of Senator Risch's staff coming from the Gem State.
The fight against the Lava Ridge Wind Project, which Senator Risch views as detrimental to Idaho's interests and landscape.
The critical role of small businesses in America's economy and the need to protect them from burdensome regulations.
The challenge of navigating complex legislation in D.C., compared to the more straightforward process in Idaho's state legislature.
Senator Risch's perspective on public service and the importance of appreciating America's freedoms and opportunities.
Senator Risch's insights offer a glimpse into the workings of our federal government and the ongoing efforts to ensure Idaho's voice is heard in national policy decisions. His commitment to fighting for local control and pushing back against regulatory overreach resonates with many Idahoans concerned about federal intervention in state matters.
We hope you find value in Senator Risch's perspectives on public policy, the challenges facing our state, and the importance of engaged citizenship in preserving America's democratic traditions.
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Brennan Summers, Host (00:00):
Welcome to the Idaho Main Street Podcast where we talk about the issues that matter to you. Welcome to the Idaho Main Street podcast. We're here today with former Idaho governor and current US Senator Jim Risc. Senator, thanks so much for being here.
U.S. Senator James Risch (00:19):
Glad to be here. Thank you. Thanks
Brennan Summers, Host (00:20):
For having me. I got my first start in DC as a college summer intern in your office, and what was interesting is you made sure that your team knew that although the office was located in the district, district of Columbia, you wanted an Idaho approach. You wanted them to operate like they were in Idaho.
U.S. Senator James Risch (00:38):
Well, we hire most everybody from Idaho, certainly in the personal office. The vast majority are in the foreign relations office. It's a little tougher, but we still have a lot of people from Idaho because that's got lanes that people are specialists in and you have to go for a wider group there, but no, look, you got to dance with who brought you to the dance, and so we are focused on Idaho. Every decision I make is based first and foremost on how is this going to affect Idaho people.
Brennan Summers, Host (01:14):
Yeah. How difficult has it been to take your no nonsense, solve the problem approach to a city, an area that's not typically known for that?
U.S. Senator James Risch (01:24):
Well, look, it's a legislative job, be it the state level or a federal level is very different than an executive job. People always say to me, which would you like better being governor, being the US Senate. They're very different jobs, and there's about a dozen of us, any one time that have been former governors in the Senate, Republican and Democrat, the ones who were in their state legislature before they were a governor, they move right into the Senate job and it really isn't a problem if they'd never been in a legislative experience. They're just astounded at how different it is and how the legislative democratic process is so different than the executive job. The executive job. People bring you a problem, you get the team around the table, have everybody give you the input. What's the problem? What are the issues associated with? What are the options that we have?
(02:24):
What are the upside downside of the options? What do you recommend? What do you recommend? I chose doing number two, go make it happen. That's not the way the legislature works. They put a loaf of bread on the table and the first thing you do is start debating about it and goes on for a long, long time, sometimes for years, and when all is said and done, you never wind up with a loaf of bread like you do when you're governor. You wind up with a piece of it if you're lucky, and it's a give and take process, and it's unique to problem solving, but look, we're all human beings. We solve problems like human beings do and everybody's different.
Brennan Summers, Host (03:02):
I love the approach to, you got to solve the problem. You got to engage in it. Most Idaho Idahoans, their understanding of how the government is operating or not operating, it's just coming from what they see here or read. Is it accurate, do you think we, is there a story going on in the US Senate that we're not seeing?
U.S. Senator James Risch (03:22):
It's hard to describe being as close to it as I am, but I will say this. I read the national stories and state stories too about how toxic it is back there and how awful the relationships are and that sort of thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Are we polarized? We are deeply, deeply polarized on the issues, but as far as getting along, look, there's a hundred of us in the Senate, just as an example, a couple of times a year we have dinners where with spouses, and so you go to the dinner tables of 10 round tables, open seating, so the Republicans on one side of the room, Democrats on the other side of the room, it's open seating. You sit wherever out of the a hundred people, there's only maybe five or six. You hope, yeah, maybe I'd like them, and it isn't on a partisan basis either, I can tell you that.
(04:16):
But look, we get along very well. We're human beings. When we get together, we talk about what people talk about, whether you're at church or school or whatever. You talk about normal kinds of things, your families, your fishing and hunting and all those kinds of things. But when it comes to issues, we all represent our constituencies, and if there's one wish I had for Idaho people is everybody could stand in my shoes for a couple of days because you'd come back and kiss the ground here in Idaho. I mean, you hear a lot of complaints about the legislature and this, that, and everything. I can tell you having served 28 years up there in the state senate in one capacity or another, that place runs like a fine tuned Swiss watch compared to back in dc. But look, we're all human beings. We get through these things and we're headed for an interesting rest of the year. I think I've run 36 times myself. I've been involved in a half a dozen presidential races, either as a state chairman or a national surrogate or what have you. I've never seen anything like this. I mean, it's going to be be interesting.
Brennan Summers, Host (05:24):
I listen to old Obama advisor who is criticizing what that administration had done in that they hired too many people who look at the rest of the country with Periscopes. They have to look at the country from a distance. Your office, as you mentioned, you dance with the people that you brought. You've stayed close to the issues, and one of the issues that you've stayed really close to recently and making sure that even if you're not always in Idaho, you can know what's going on in Idaho, is this issue with the Lava Ridge Wind Project. Talk to us a little bit about when that came on your radar and what you're hearing.
U.S. Senator James Risch (05:54):
First of all, I'm in Idaho a lot. I come home every weekend, so I'm here every week. The Lava Ridge project, the first, I mean my undergraduate degree was in natural resources. My bachelor's degree was in forest management, so natural resources are not foreign to me by any stretch of the imagination, and I've had a lot of experience with it. As you know, when I was governor, I wrote the roadless rule for Idaho, which is in place now and will be hopefully for a long time. When they threw that thing on the table in front of me, it didn't make sense on every possible level, and so you start to think, what's going on here and what's going on is it was a typical proposition by this administration who you can understand really simply. People say, oh, this is so confusing. It isn't confusing at all.
(06:48):
If you want to think about the Biden Harris administration, think of woke and think of green because that's all they care about. That is everything they do. All they care about is woke and green, and so green, gosh, this is wonderful. They're like Idahos. They value public lands. All I can see is after looking at that is the hell they do, that's a hundred thousand acres that they're taking and going to pollute with these towers that are higher than the space needle. What are they thinking? Well, what they're thinking is the other side of the coin, oh, well, we need green energy, and I says, you don't need a hundred thousand acres for green energy. Build yourself a small nuclear plant that'll put out way more power than this, and it'll take up maybe five acres instead of a hundred thousand. And then since this energy that they're making is going to California, don't build it here, build it in California for crying out loud. Anyway, so the fight's on and they have their neck bowed and well, as you probably saw the videos of my goal with both the head of the BLM, the tree
Brennan Summers, Host (07:50):
Spiker
U.S. Senator James Risch (07:52):
And the woman who's Secretary of Interior, both of 'em are just dead wrong on this. Somebody in the White House has said, you're going to do this, and they just got their head down and going forward. So if Trump gets elected, this thing's over because within an hour we're going to do just what they did to the pipeline, and that is we'll have an executive order ready to go, and that thing will be ended. If Trump does not get elected, then it's a bigger fight and that lawsuits are going to go on for a long, long time.
Brennan Summers, Host (08:25):
Yeah. You referenced the committee meeting you had where you got the Secretary of Interior, Deb Holland right in front of you, and you were able to ask her questions about if everyone in Idaho hates this and doesn't want it, are you still going to do it? And she seemed to double down.
U.S. Senator James Risch (08:36):
Yeah, no, she didn't say yes, but she inferred, yes, they don't care about us. It is what everybody loves to hate about the federal government. What they're doing here is they're going to do what they want to do from thousands of miles away without any regard for those of us that live on the land. And it's heartbreaking, number one, but it also enrages people and rightfully so.
Brennan Summers, Host (09:09):
Yeah, and the precedent that it sets, that local control really is just kind of thrown out the window. You always try to empower the state legislature, so you've proposed if the state legislature doesn't want something, then the federal government really should not do
U.S. Senator James Risch (09:20):
It. Absolutely. And it goes even further than that down. If the county commissioners and the local people don't want it, even to me, that's even more powerful, but they want these extra kilowatts in what they call green energy from this wind, which is, and there's all kinds of things wrong with that. The cost of those things and the fallacy that building a wind tower somehow is a green way to do business. I mean, the cost of those amount of energy that goes into 'em. What most people don't understand also is those blades on there have to be changed regularly, and I've seen pictures that they've got these, they've got landfills where these blades are just stacked up by the thousands and they're not made out of metal. I was surprised when I saw that. I thought you put a blade on there and that was that, but they have to be changed regularly. It's not metal. It's some kind of a composite that you can't even recycle. And so I mean, it's wrong on every level that there is.
Brennan Summers, Host (10:34):
The deeper you dig, the worse it gets is what it sounds like.
U.S. Senator James Risch (10:37):
No question about it. No question about
Brennan Summers, Host (10:38):
That. So give us some hope. You mentioned that this presidential election matters, but you've also introduced legislation. You've teamed up with the delegation, the don't do it act. If anyone wonders what that's about, it's pretty clear.
U.S. Senator James Risch (10:50):
Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah. Pretty clear.
Brennan Summers, Host (10:52):
Where do we go with that legislation?
U.S. Senator James Risch (10:54):
Well, those are always tough. What you try to do is you try to find a spot when you're doing legislation in DC it is so different than doing legislation here. Here you really can't tinker with legislation and pull a fast one. In Idaho, we have a constitutional requirement that says one bill, one subject matter,
(11:18):
So that's the way it is. You can only legislate one thing at a time. You get a straight up yes or no vote on it back in dc you can put anything in a bill. There's no prohibition on that, so they got everything from abortion to zebras in the same bill, and so you wind up always with a multi-thousand page bill, and it's awful because you're faced almost always when you're faced with one of those, it is a hobson's choice. If there's stuff in there you really love and there's stuff in there that you absolutely hate, so what do you do? And so Mike ple and I always meet before the vote. Our voting record is substantially closer. Well, a lot of states have an R and a D and they just offset each other, but we, out of the almost 5,000 votes I've cast since I've been back there, Mike and I have only separated I think on three of them that were minor pieces. Actually, they were confirmations that weren't even legislation. So we always sit and we talk and make a decision that we're going to, whatever happens, we're going to I Idaho is going to get two votes out of it.
Brennan Summers, Host (12:27):
And one of the reputations you have not just working so closely with Senator Crapo is when there's something like this you don't like that your constituents tell you they don't like that industry and stakeholders say, don't like you, fight like hell to make sure it doesn't happen.
U.S. Senator James Risch (12:37):
We try.
Brennan Summers, Host (12:38):
But on the flip side, senator, there are things that are important that your constituents and stakeholders tell you are important, and you fight like hell to get it, and one legacy you'll have is your advocacy for small businesses. Walk us through why these local gems, these small businesses throughout Idaho, you highlight and you try to empower and make their path to success kind of easier.
U.S. Senator James Risch (12:57):
Small businesses, America, I mean that's what we are all about, is what our economy is all about. Small businesses actually, big business, if you put 'em all together, you wake up in the morning, you open the paper and you say, well, general Electric is hiring a thousand people today or firing a thousand people. Small businesses do that before breakfast every day, but they do 'em one, two at a time and they don't make the headlines, but they are really the backbone of America. And amazingly, if before the internet, before the big box stores, if we were sitting here talking about it, you'd have to think that those two inventions, first the big box stores and then the internet would put small business out of business. They haven't, has it caused them to struggle some, yes. There's no question about that. Has it hurt? Yes. But they're still the main street business.
(13:58):
There's still the heartbeat of this country, and so you want to do everything you possibly can. And when Congress does things so often, they totally ignore small business. They're talking about a rule or a regulation that first of all, you shouldn't be doing anyway. But secondly, big businesses can handle this. I mean, they got an army of lawyers. They got an army of army of accountants. They got an army of compliance officers, a guy that's fixing lawnmowers in his garage. He doesn't have the ability to do that. When he gets this 25 page form that takes two hours to fill out, it's incredible burden for 'em, and they just ignore that. I try to bring that to their attention every time they do that and slap 'em around and say, think about what you're doing.
Brennan Summers, Host (14:48):
There you go. And it's seen, and I know the small business community appreciates the way that you try to fight back on the unnecessary regulations coming down the pipe.
U.S. Senator James Risch (14:55):
Yeah. The regulatory structure is one of the subtle things that really influences businesses in America when first of all, when a Republican gets elected president, stock market always has a big bloom. And why is that? Well, they know that we are just death on regulations. Look, we're supposed to make the law. Congress is supposed to make the law. Now, there is substantially more effect on people's lives that happen from the bureaucracy passing regulations than Congress making laws, and so we push back on that all the time. Regulations are just a horrible, horrible thing. Now, are there some that need to be in place? Of course there are that Congress or state legislature, the best example I always give is fish and game regulations. Well, fish and game regulations have the rule of law behind them, and they should, the legislature can't sit there and determine in each of the game units what the harvest should be, what the shooting hours should be, and days and that sort of thing.
(16:11):
Same way with the federal level with weights and measures. I mean, we can't sit there making regulations on how you have to regulate weights and measures, so there's a place for it. But when you're doing horrendous things, I mean, these guys, you've seen 'em try this where they pass, the president does an executive order scene. Well, if you're in business of manufacturing automobiles, 30% of your cars have to be electric by such and such a date. What the that, that's not the executive branch's job. That's our job. That's a policy decision that's got to be made by Congress. Right or wrong. So we are really big on scene that we, Congress are responsible, elected officials are responsible for what happens and the regulatory stuff. Lava Ridge is a good example of that. I mean, there it is a regulation right in front of you that's biting us badly.
Brennan Summers, Host (17:09):
Yeah, we know you're fighting the good fight on that front, if we had time, we'd get into your good work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, your work with intelligence. Another time we'll have to pick your brain on how you sleep at night, knowing what you know.
U.S. Senator James Risch (17:20):
We'll do this
Brennan Summers, Host (17:21):
Another time, but Senator, I was privileged, as I said, as an intern to peak at your calendar here and there, and I don't know if I've ever seen a calendar so busy. So as we let you get back to your day, I want to just wrap up. You've been in public service since your twenties and you've given your life at local, state, and federal levels. So, so many different things. What do you say to the people out there who are getting disenfranchised and disengaging on this idea of
U.S. Senator James Risch (17:42):
Public service? That's a really good question. I'd say this, God bless America with the problems we have here and the issues we have here. It's easy to get closed-minded and say, oh, this stuff is so terrible. First of all, as a culture, we are the most fortunate people to ever live on this planet in the history of this planet. We live better. We live freer than anyone has ever lived on this planet with all the problems and all the difficulties that we have. If you travel around the world, you come back here and kiss the ground. One of the things I always said is, if you really want to straighten out this country, require that every high schooler in their junior year leave America, go to a communist country that's a third world country and spend the year there, and then have them come back and finish out their senior year.
(18:33):
This country would be a different country. They would, first of all, have a real appreciation for what we have here in America. Look, we've been through a revolution. We've been through a civil war. We've been through world wars, we've been through a depression. We've been through all kinds of issues, and we're still standing and going to continue to stand, and as long as the people are in charge of this thing, it's going to go on. Is it ever going to settle down? Of course not. Founding fathers didn't want it that way. They wanted it so that we would have a robust democratic argument about it and where things should go. When it's over, we vote and then we live with it.
Brennan Summers, Host (19:11):
God bless America. God
U.S. Senator James Risch (19:12):
Bless
Brennan Summers, Host (19:13):
America. Senator, keep up the good fight. We're praying for you. Appreciate your time today.
U.S. Senator James Risch (19:16):
Thank you.
Brennan Summers, Host (19:17):
Okay, till next time.
