Ryan Wilcox

Here one example I know well. I led the research effort for the Utah House when Gov. Herbert was pushing his signature legislation, Healthy Utah, aka Obamacare Medicaid Expansion to a mostly single, healthy, working-age population without dependent children who refuse to work part-time. Speaker @CitizenHughes made defeating that tax and spend monstrosity his number one priority his first year as speaker. He was able to show the House and Senate Republicans that it would destroy the state’s fiscal position in very short order, and create much greater dependency, leading to the prioritization in services for that population over the truly disabled and needy. The law was literally written in such a way to incentivize that inversion of priorities. Consequently, Healthy Utah was defeated in the legislature because nothing about it made sense. Then along came a California healthcare union, formerly SEIU, that funded an effort to put it on the ballot the same year as marijuana. It just barely passed because, ya know, “it’s for the children.” The legislature was able to make some changes after its passage so that it wouldn’t completely wipe out the state’s budget. See, initiatives don’t have to actually balance a budget, they’ll just increase taxes when there’s no more money for a statutorily-required program. After the state Supreme Court ruling that created super-laws and would’ve never allowed them to make such changes like that again, we will be screwed as a state without a threshold change.