The European Union and more than 30 other nations have ratified a long sought treaty to make it easier to track delinquent parents who flee across foreign borders to duck their child support obligations. Until this month, the treaty, which was painstakingly negotiated at The Hague to improve the lot of needy, abandoned families, had been progressing toward acceptance in the United States. Nineteen states found no problem in signing on.

Then it was Idaho’s turn. The Republican-controlled state Senate approved the treaty unanimously. Yet a House committee impulsively refused to send it along for full floor debate in a 9-to-8 vote that featured xenophobic fantasies about Idaho citizens being ordered about by foreign courts and foreign law. Right-wing alarmists raised fears that the good people of Idaho could suddenly find themselves subject to Shariah, the Islamic legal code. These and other bogus claims kept a sensible, badly-needed treaty bottled up in committee while endangering its ratification by the United States. This is far more consequential than the usual boilerplate arguments about states’ rights. Unless the treaty is ratified, child support recipients not just in Idaho but across the nation could be at risk of losing benefits the treaty is designed to secure. All this from a single no vote in Idaho. The various arguments drummed up by critics and opponents have been succinctly debunked in a legal analysis from the state attorney general, Lawrence Wasden. He cited chapter and verse in showing Idaho loses none of its constitutional powers and is only extending reciprocal child support enforcement it now has with the other states.

Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter, a Republican, has been left with damage control for what local headlines call the “mess” left by House Republicans at the close of their session. He should promptly summon the Legislature back for a special session and give the full House a chance to correct their colleagues’ foolhardiness.