Crapo, Risch, Fulcher & Simpson Voted to House Foreign Nationals While Idaho Kids Get Priced Out of Homes

Idaho sent four Republicans to Congress. Crapo. Risch. Fulcher. Simpson. And all four voted yes on H.R. 6644.

Every single one.

This is a bill that lets HUD publish federal zoning guidelines telling your city council how to handle land use, doesn’t mention immigration once across 56 sections, and has banking deregulation provisions stapled to the back that couldn’t pass on their own.

And all four Idaho Republicans said “sure, sounds great.”

This thing passed the House 358-32 (41 not voting). Yikes. Because when has Washington agreeing on anything that hard ever worked out for you? For your neighborhood? Or for the town your grandpa built?

A prominent X account posted this video in response:

I think that nobody read this bill, I mean... look:

HUD publishes model guidelines encouraging duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in single-family neighborhoods. Then it ties some Community Development Block Grant funding and competitive grants to demonstrated housing production and zoning reforms.

Manufactured homes are pushed into more subdivisions. Multifamily housing is incentivized in retail zones, and your quiet Idaho town with good schools gets a 200-unit apartment complex next to the elementary school.

And the bill’s own stated purpose says it’s about “increasing local flexibility over housing decisions.” It publishes federal zoning frameworks while tying money to communities that don’t build fast enough. That’s the opposite of flexibility and every single person who voted yes either didn’t read it or doesn’t care... which one is worse? I don’t know.

(Crapo, Risch, Fulcher, and Simpson apparently didn’t ask)

The Founders actually built a mechanism to prevent exactly this. Many folks don’t know that State legislatures used to pick senators. Before the 17th Amendment gutted that in 1913, Crapo and Risch would’ve had to walk into the Idaho statehouse and explain this vote. Face to face with state legislators who actually deal with zoning, who hear from county commissioners and city councils every week.

Try explaining to those people why you just handed their authority to HUD.

I bet they’d never have voted yes because the Idaho legislature would’ve yanked them.

But we don’t have that accountability anymore because senators answer to campaign donors and national party infrastructure now (not to their state governments, not to anyone who actually governs locally).

Two Idaho senators just voted for these federal zoning frameworks that the Idaho statehouse would probably reject if anyone bothered asking. The 17th Amendment didn’t “democratize the Senate” and bills like H.R. 6644 are what that looks like when it plays out over a century later.

The immigration silence is where this bill tells on itself completely though. 56 sections and the word immigration appears exactly zero times. We’ve got 50 million+ foreign-born people here. Net migration has been at historic levels in recent years, they’re still flooding the labor market and housing market simultaneously and then acting baffled that Americans can’t afford to live anywhere.

Idaho’s seen some of the fastest population growth in the country and our entire delegation just voted for a bill that treats supply like it exists in a vacuum.

Demand doesn’t matter apparently...

Where all these people are coming from doesn’t matter. Just build more units and don’t ask questions.

This is a big green light to developers and foreigners and a big middle finger to our young people. Both parties know why they won’t touch the demand side - the cheap-labor coalition funds both of them. Oh and they stapled a bunch of banking deregulation bills onto this thing too. All bills that couldn’t pass on their own merits so they got smuggled inside an emotional vehicle about families who can’t afford homes.

You want to deregulate community banks? Write a community banking bill. Go hold hearings on it. But nope, of course not... legislative laundering is easier (especially when parents are holding up pictures of their kids at the press conference).

The Opportunity Zones prioritization might actually be the worst part though. HUD gives additional weight to projects in “Opportunity Zones,” which (if you forgot) was Senator Tim Scott’s program that was supposed to lift distressed communities but mostly just became a way for connected investors to do luxury development in neighborhoods already gentrifying.

So now, if signed, we’re stacking MORE federal incentives on top of a proven failure. Your local contractor in Nampa or Twin Falls building ten affordable houses? He’s not getting those grants. Because he has no lobbyists, no federal grant writers, and really - no shot.

There’s also an FHA small-dollar mortgage pilot. Sounds cool, right? Federal government backstopping mortgages for people who couldn’t otherwise qualify. But oh wait, we tried this in 2008 and millions of families lost everything. But slap a “pilot program” label on it so it sounds cautious and here we go running it back like the 08’ crash never happened (I believe the kids call this “retard-maxing”).

Only five Republican senators voted no.

Not Crapo.

Not Risch.

Not Fulcher.

Not Simpson.

Kudos to Mike Lee though who got closest to actually saying the real thing when he argued the bill “does not do nearly enough to safeguard housing programs for American citizens only” and called for mass deportations as the actual housing fix.

But Idaho’s congressmen couldn’t be bothered to make that argument. Or any argument apparently.

The Senate vote was 85-5 (with 10 not voting). Both parties’ donor bases got fed and they wrapped it in compassion language so you’d feel weird opposing it.

Pat Buchanan warned about this his entire career (i.e. when both parties are clapping, check your wallet). Connected developers are eating off federal grants, banks got their deregulation smuggled through without a standalone vote, and HUD’s budget just got fatter.

Oh, and, your kid who can’t afford a starter home in Meridian? He gets a pilot program, a study, a framework, and a report.

Sincerely, your entire Idaho delegation.