Idaho delegation sponsors successful bill

KETCHUM (AP) - Idaho's congressional delegation sponsored 52 bills during the 111th Congress, one of which became law.

That was Democrat Rep. Walt Minnick's measure to designate a Nampa post office as the "Herbert A. Littleton Postal Station."

The Idaho Mountain Express reports that the Idaho delegation did better on co-sponsored legislation, with eight bills passed.

That included Republican Rep. Mike Simpson's co-sponsoring of a bill preventing distribution of "animal crush videos" that appeal to a sexual fetish by showing women killing small animals.

And Republican Sen. Mike Crapo co-sponsored the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.

Minnick co-sponsored three bills that became law.

One prevented Congress from receiving a cost-of-living salary adjustment in 2011, a second changed the pay schedule of excise taxes on firearms and another designated a post office in Dixon, Ill., as the "President Ronald W. Reagan Post Office Building."

Some bills sponsored by the Idaho delegation that didn't make it through included Simpson's Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act, or CIEDRA, which would have created three wilderness areas in the Boulder and White Cloud Mountains of 332,775 acres.

When it was introduced, it had the support of the entire Idaho delegation. But Republican Sen. Jim Risch voiced his opposition after introducing it in the Senate.

The bill never made it out of the Senate Subcommittee for Public Lands and Forests.

Risch and Crapo sponsored a bill that would have returned wolf management to Idaho, and co-sponsored a bill introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would have removed gray wolves from federal protection. Neither passed.