The first session of the 107th Legislature has convened. First sessions are long, ninety legislative days. Bills introduced but not passed in the first session carry over into the second session. The current end of the session is scheduled for the 10th of June. 

I have introduced sixteen bills this session. I want to devote the next several weekly updates to explaining what they are about. 

LB 237 is a bill to stop applying Nebraska income tax to Social Security payments. Nebraska is one of thirteen states that tax Social Security. Two-thirds of people drawing Social Security benefits have only this money to live on — they have no other source of income. Besides that, the money people pay into Social Security has already been subject to income taxes when you earned it. I consider the practice immoral. I’ve introduced this bill every session I have been a state senator and I’ll continue to until we pass it. As it turns out, Sen. Lindstrom has also introduced a very similar bill so the Revenue Committee will get to hear this idea twice!

LB 235 is a bill to “turn on” state meat inspection and make Nebraska the 28th state to do so. It will take two sessions of the legislature to get this done. This bill is the first step. In 1968 Congress passed a food safety law requiring all meat be inspected. At the time, most every state had their own meat inspection program. Like a lot of states, Nebraska turned off their state meat inspection program in 1971 to save money on something the federal government decided they were going to do. It was a good idea at the time. Now it is increasingly difficult for small meat lockers to actually get a USDA meat inspector. The agency’s focus is on the big packer that slaughters thousands of animals a day, not the small town locker that might do twenty a week. 

I agree with a recent Nebraska editorial that said that “Nebraska should be to beef what Napa is to wine.” In fact, I think we are already there. Our  state has “the best in the world” of something, and we need to take every opportunity to promote and support that industry. Small town, state-inspected meat lockers in Iowa can sell beef and pork on-line and sell it across state lines. Small meat lockers in Nebraska cannot. The bottleneck created by the response to COVID showed us how a great market for beef quickly began to struggle because we lack slaughter capacity in Nebraska. We need laws that incentivize the opening of small town meat lockers in Nebraska. We need laws that open up these new markets for ranchers who make the most valuable thing we produce in Nebraska.  

We are the Beef State. It is long past the time when the Nebraska Legislature recognized this and did something about it. LB 235 will be heard in the Agriculture Committee Tuesday, the 2nd of February.