Committee introduces measure to recognize gold and silver as optional legal tender

Representative Steve Miller introduced RS 32255, a draft resolution that would declare gold and silver as specie and make them optional legal tender between willing buyers and sellers.

Miller told the House State Affairs Committee that the draft does not force anyone to accept gold or silver and that use would be entirely voluntary. “This is just a legal tender bill for silver and gold,” Miller said. He said language addressing capital gains was removed because related language would appear in House Bill 40.

The draft, Miller said, defines terms including “debt,” “entity” and “silver and gold coin,” and would allow those forms of specie “to make tender in payment of debts under authority reserved to the several states,” a phrase Miller linked to the U.S. Constitution. He also described the measure as preserving a right “never delegated by the people of Idaho to any governmental institution.”

Representative Scott moved to introduce RS 32255. The committee carried the motion by voice vote; there was no roll-call recorded in the transcript.

No formal amendments to the draft were reported in the committee discussion. Questions from members touched on whether existing state law already permits private contracts in alternative media of exchange; Miller said his view was that the measure would make such use “legal tender” rather than merely permitted by private agreement.

Action taken: the committee voted to introduce RS 32255 and referred it for further processing.

Ending: Committee staff will process RS 32255 for further committee consideration or referral per the legislature’s usual procedures.