We know how to solve our problems.Party politics are getting in the way.

Sarah Zabel — Independent for U.S. Congress in Idaho's First District

Where I stand, and why.

Social Security faces a funding shortfall Congress has known about for decades and refused to fix. The national debt now costs every Idaho family in higher mortgage rates, higher borrowing costs, higher prices. Our farmers and ranchers are caught between tariffs that raise their input costs and retaliation that closes their markets. These are not ideological problems. They are practical ones, and they have practical answers.

I see America as the most successful entity in history in establishing and advancing security and prosperity for its people. Government's job is to reduce the obstacles to American inventiveness and industry, and then stop. That means free markets and open trade, honest rules that keep the largest players from rewriting them, legal immigration matched to what the economy actually needs, a safety net that lets people take risks and recover from setbacks, and investment in the infrastructure and institutions that markets won't build on their own. A government that is funded, focused, functional — and restrained.

These positions draw from the tradition the Republican Party once held and has largely abandoned. They are more fiscally serious than what either party currently offers, less ideologically rigid than both, and grounded in what actually works rather than what tests well in a primary. I am not running against a party. I am running for the Idaho that deserves better than what Washington has been delivering.

Policy Priorities
Social Security
Social Security faces a funding shortfall by 2032. Congress has known this for decades and done nothing, because fixing it requires both parties to give something up. Social Security is not charity, it is an entitlement to what we paid in over long years of labor. It is the safety net that lets people take risks, knowing that a lifetime of work won't end in poverty. I support a bipartisan reform framework that preserves the program along its principles of adequacy and equity, for the next 75 years and beyond. Read the full position →
Fiscal Stewardship
It has taken the actions and policies of both parties to push us to the level of debt not seen since the Second World War. We now pay more in interest on the national debt than we spend on defense, Medicare, or border security. There are consequences. Our debt drives up borrowing costs for every Idaho family and crowds out the investments that would actually grow the economy. I support tax reform that asks more from those with the highest earnings — not to punish success, but because the alternative is a debt trajectory that no serious person defends. It also means regulatory and spending reform so that government actually delivers the value it costs. Read the full position →
Health Care
We spend more per person on health care than any comparable country, and get worse outcomes. The reason traditional solutions haven't worked is that health care doesn't behave like a normal market: adding competition doesn't automatically bring prices down, and in rural Idaho there often isn't any competition to add. That structural reality requires targeted, sustained action on hospital and physician costs, prescription drug pricing, and the insurance marketplace. Getting this right is a long-term project. My proposals are a serious start.Read the full position →
Housing Affordability
Housing is the top budget priority for Idahoans three years running, and with good reason: more than half of renters say they can't afford to buy because prices are too high. The federal government can help by removing obstacles that drive up building, outfitting, and insurance costs for new housing, starting with tariffs and a broken worker visa system. Read the policy outline →
Agriculture & Trade
Idaho's agricultural exports are not a sideline, they are essential to our economy. Tariffs raise the costs of fertilizer and other raw materials, invite retaliation, and destroy confidence in the reliability of our supply. When markets move elsewhere, they are not readily recovered. Other federal policies and proposals further increase the stress on our agricultural industry, threatening access to public lands and the existence of an adequate agricultural workforce. Drop the tariffs and commit to reasonable immigration reform. Read the policy outline →
Public Lands
More than 60 percent of land in Idaho is held by the federal government. Idahoans depend on that land for hunting and fishing, grazing, timber, and the watersheds that feed our farms and our aquifers. Recent federal legislation has proposed selling portions of that land to private developers as a way to offset spending. Selling that land to private developers would hand a permanent public asset to private interests, and what's sold is gone. That is the wrong answer. I support the Public Lands in Public Hands Act or, if it fails, a durable solution in that mold.
Immigration
Idaho's farms, dairies, and food processors depend on workers that the domestic labor market doesn't supply in adequate numbers. Restricting that labor doesn't protect American jobs, it leaves crops in the field and businesses on the edge of failure. We need to match legal immigration pathways to what the economy actually needs. We also need enforcement that is fair and consistent, because uncertainty drives workers underground and makes the planning that businesses depend on impossible.Read the policy outline →
Economy & Competition
Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, but the rules increasingly favor those large enough to write them. Concentrated markets shape the regulations that govern them; competition stops being honest and smaller businesses can't compete on merit. Tariffs make it worse: large businesses absorb the costs or pass them to consumers; small ones can't absorb them at all, and businesses large enough to navigate the exclusion process may see those costs refunded while the small ones don't see a dime. Honest competition also requires government to do certain things: fund the public infrastructure and basic research that large incumbents can provide for themselves but small businesses cannot, and enforing labor and safety standards that protect workers. I support restoring free markets through antitrust enforcement, trade rules that serve Idaho producers, and public investment in the infrastructure and research that lets small businesses compete on the merits of their ideas.
Federal Accountability
Our federal government holds extraordinary powers, including the use of deadly force at home and abroad. Federal agents enjoy presumptive immunity and our military must presume orders are lawful. Our government needs these powers to respond quickly and effectively to threats from within and outside the country. But in our system, the power ultimately lies with the people, and federal agencies and the individuals in them must be accountable to Congress, as the people's branch of government. In the last year, we've seen Americans killed on the streets by federal agents and hundreds of Idaho citizens and legal residents detained at a family event in Wilder. From the Nassar case to the Epstein files, we see evidence that serious crimes were reported over and over again to federal authorities, while they failed to respond adequately. And, the thousands of American lives lost in Korea and Vietnam taught us painful lessons about the consequences of committing military forces to combat without clear congressional authorization — lessons that led directly to the War Powers Act of 1973. We owe it to their memories, and to the veterans of those wars still living in Idaho today, to make sure our service members are entered into military conflicts only with the authorization of Congress and the backing of law. Congress must hold federal agents and agencies accountable, by our laws, the people harmed cannot do so directly. I support restructuring Inspector General positions to report directly to Congress, strengthening whistleblower protections, and restoring rigorous Congressional oversight of federal agencies and the use of military force. Read the policy outline →
AI & Digital Integrity
With AI-generated deep fakes, coordinated media manipulation, and the spread of disinformation, we can no longer take for granted that what we see, hear, or read reflects reality. We question the integrity of elections. We question the safety of medicines. We question the motivations of institutions we once trusted. At the same time, AI is reshaping entire industries and the nature of work itself at a pace no prior technology has matched. Yet, AI and machine learning have the potential to boost human accomplishment to levels we've never seen before, and to give small businesses, independent producers, and rural communities access to capabilities that once belonged only to large institutions. The goal is to capture those gains while building the guardrails that keep the technology honest. Of all the areas addressed on this page, this is the one where policy is least developed — the problem is genuinely new. I am committed to solutions that rebuild trust and embrace progress; I am eyes open to the threat.

The framework exists. The common ground exists. Looking at old problems through a clearer lens can reveal solutions that partisanship has kept out of view.

A Final Word

Our institutions change over time, but the fundamentals don't. Our Constitution is still our foundation and our elections still matter. If enough Idahoans say that we want a positive change — and we outline it clearly — we'll turn the country in the direction it needs to go.

We can keep swinging back and forth between unappetizing alternatives until something happens.

Or we happen.