In the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature expectation lurks as a kind of devilish phantom farmer secretly sowing seeds of disappointment. That is what life is sometimes like inside the Nebraska State Legislature. You can spend an entire year or more crafting a single piece of legislation only to see it fail on the floor of the Legislature by a single vote or two, and that is what happened last week on more than one occasion.

Last week was a very disappointing week in the Nebraska State Legislature. With just a few days left in the legislative session, some of the Legislature’s most important bills failed to advance and become law, and sometimes it was by a small margin of votes. So, today I am going to tell you about three bills which should have advanced in the Legislature last week, but didn’t. Each of these bills was a good bill, but is now dead for the year.

The first bill to tell you about is my own constitutional resolution for the consumption tax, known in the Legislature as LR 264 CA. LR 264 CA was my priority bill for the year and it failed on the floor of the Legislature with only 19 affirmative votes. It needed 25 votes to advance. What was just as disappointing as the vote was the fact that the north gallery was completely full of citizen supporters who came out to listen to the debate only to see that only a few Senators remained on the floor to participate in the debate. Instead of hearing reasons to support the consumption tax, these Senators had already made deals with the lobbyists or made up their own minds not to support it and turned a deaf ear to the floor debate. So, LR 264 CA is now dead.

The second bill to tell you about was LB 933, Sen. Joni Albrecht’s pro-life bill. This bill was equipped with a trigger clause to end the practice of abortion in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Constitution gets amended, or Congress passes enabling legislation allowing states to pass their own laws on abortion. However, pro-choice Senators led a filibuster against the bill. When Sen. Albrecht tried to get around the filibuster by invoking cloture, a motion which would have ended the floor debate and put the bill up for a vote, it failed by only two votes. Cloture votes require affirmative votes from two-thirds of the Legislature (33 votes), and failure to meet that threshold automatically ends debate for the day. The cloture vote received 31 YES votes with three Senators absent, which was 67.4 percent of the Legislature, more than two-thirds. Nevertheless, 15 NO votes or 32.6 percent of the Legislature was all that was needed to kill the bill. LB 933 is now dead.

The third bill to tell you about is LB 543, otherwise known as the Right-to-Repair Act. LB 543 was Sen. Tom Brandt’s priority bill for the year. The Right-to-Repair Act gives the owner of agricultural equipment the right to repair equipment without breaching the manufacturer’s original contract. Owners of the equipment would be given access to manuals, tools and parts which are necessary for making the repairs. The Right-to-Repair Act is controversial because it mandates that manufacturers part with their own proprietary information. Passing LB 543 on General File, however, would have enabled the Legislature to continue having a constructive conversation about this very controversial topic. Instead, LB 543 failed on floor of the Legislature. So, LB 543 is now dead.

As you can see, life in the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature can sometimes be full of disappointments. It can be frustrating to invest yourself in a piece of legislation only to see it die in committee or fail on the floor of the Legislature. Being a State Senator is not a job for the faint of heart; instead, it is a job which requires firm resolve, steadfast patience, and persistence over time. I will be back again next year to try and achieve my number one goal, which is to give meaningful tax relief to all Nebraskans.

When the Apostle Paul was imprisoned in Rome and couldn’t go anywhere or do much of anything, he wrote a letter to the church at Colossae instructing Christians there to “make the most of every opportunity,” Colossians 4:5. Perhaps, being under house arrest altered Paul’s view of time and helped him see the inherent value of each new day. Time is a very precious commodity precisely because it is the measurement of our lives. How we spend our time matters.

Having acknowledged these simple truths about time, I am sad to have to report about how the budget debates in the Nebraska State Legislature last week waisted a lot time. Please don’t get me wrong on this: Debating the State budget is one of the most important things State legislators do. Debating how the State should spend your hard-earned tax dollars is a matter of grave importance to me, but debating the budget is hardly what State Senators actually did last week.

Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha hijacked the budget debate last week. Sen. Lathrop is the chair of the Judiciary Committee. Lathrop’s top priority this year before he retires as a State Senator is to deliver on prison reform. His bill LB 920 encapsulates his philosophy for rehabilitative prison reform. Instead of debating the budget, Sen. Lathrop filibustered the budget bills so that he could waste 50 hours talking about his ideas for prison reform in LB 920. As a result, the budget never got the proper debate it deserved.

This year’s budget is the most important budget the State of Nebraska has had to pass in the six years that I have been a State Senator. Because of the filibuster, State Senators were denied the opportunity to amend the budget and fix some of the problems with it. Instead, Senators were forced to listen to Sen. Lathrop as he introduced 21 separate amendments on LB 1011 alone.

One of my main concerns with the budget has been not to obligate the State of Nebraska for future spending. This is especially true with spending for the American Rescue and Recovery Act of 2021 (ARPA). This year and next year lawmakers will be able to spend roughly 1 billion dollars in ARPA monies, but if these monies are not spent correctly, they will obligate the State down the road. Many of the ARPA projects that were approved do just that; they will obligate the State for future spending. If half of the ARPA monies end up obligating the State of Nebraska down the road, then it would result in a 10 percent increase in our future budgets.

Last Friday State Senators in the Nebraska State Legislature voted to pull LB 933 out of the Judiciary Committee and up to the floor for debate. LB 933 is the Nebraska Human Life Protection Act, which prohibits abortions in the event that the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Congress passes enabling legislation, or the U.S. Constitution gets amended to let states decide for themselves whether or not to ban or put restrictions on abortions.

Although I have written on the subject of abortion in the past, I have yet to address some of the specific ways that abortion harms women. Contrary to the very confused opinion of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson who last week could not define what a woman is, women are the ones to whom God has blessed with the ability to bear children, and when we interfere with that ability there are consequences which can do great harm to women. Therefore, today I am going to highlight three ways that abortion harms women.

First, abortion provides cover for those who want to sexually abuse and exploit women. Whether we are talking about incest or sex trafficking, those who want to sexually abuse women and get away with it often use abortion as a means for covering their tracks. Once the baby is removed from the womb, the primary evidence for their illicit crime has been effectively destroyed. In this way, abortion tampers with evidence and actually enables the recurrence of incest and sex trafficking. Alice Paul, who wrote the very first Equal Rights Amendment once said that abortion is “the ultimate exploitation of women,” and she was right.

Second, abortion does not empower women. Abortion activists like to claim that giving women the right to choose an abortion somehow empowers them. For example, when the actress Michelle Williams accepted her 2020 Golden Globe award, she declared that she would not have been able to win without “employing a woman’s right to choose.” But we should ask, “Does abortion really empower women?”

Abortion actually weakens women. When a woman’s success depends upon her aborting the child within her womb, that is not an example of empowerment; it is an example of weakness. Empowerment is better represented by those women who chose to keep their babies, raise their children, and also climb the ladder of success. Such was the case with Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who once credited her success as a legislator to the 20 years she spent raising her children. In an article published by the Washington Post, Nancy Pelosi encouraged young mothers to know their own power. Moreover, the late Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, once confessed that she was a more focused student at Harvard Law School precisely because she had a baby.

Third, abortion wreaks havoc on the mental health of many women who choose to get an abortion. Many women have confessed to abortion counselors how they were coerced into getting an abortion. Many have testified that they were afraid that their husbands or boyfriends would leave them unless they got an abortion. So, they got the abortion, not because they wanted to, but out of fear of losing their loved one or shame that they had somehow done something wrong.

The truth which seldom ever gets reported is that abortions often leave women with post abortive trauma and depression. Women do not forget about the baby they aborted. Guilt and deep regret often follow an abortion. Women often wonder about what kind of person their baby would have grown up to be had they not followed through on getting an abortion. Sadness and despondency often accompany them on the anniversary date of their abortion, and many women have been known to acknowledge their aborted baby at Christmas time by wrapping up gifts for them or hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree. These women have had to learn the hard way that terminating a pregnancy does not extinguish the memory of their child or remove the wonderment about the child that could have been.

For these reasons and more, I am pro-life and I will continue to support LB 933. Although it has taken Americans 50 years to figure out why abortion is wrong, the culture of America has turned solidly pro-life. A Marist poll conducted in January of this year found that 71% of Americans favor putting restrictions on abortions and a clear majority want to return these decisions back to the states. Therefore, Nebraska needs to ready itself for the day when these decisions will be returned to the states, and that is precisely what the Nebraska Human Life Protection Act aims to do.

Last week the Nebraska Legislature debated the main budget bills for the State. These budget bills always tell State Senators what the State cannot afford, but we end up spending the money anyway. That’s very easy to do when you are spending other people’s money.

Budget bills are always controversial. Although the main budget bill (LB 1011) survived the first round of floor debate by a vote of 40-6, every State Senator in the Unicameral Legislature believes the State’s money should be spent differently. Nevertheless, there are three budget issues that are generating the most controversy this year, so today I will tell you what those issues are, why they are controversial, and why they are so important to our state.

The first controversial issue relates to funding sex education in our public schools. Every year the Governor sends his budget to the State Legislature, and the Appropriations Committee takes it up. I serve on the Appropriations Committee. When Gov. Ricketts sent his budget to us, it contained a proviso that the State Department of Education could not use any of their funding to advance new sex education standards for our public schools.

Sen. John Stinner of Gering, is the chair of the Appropriations Committee. Sen. Stinner is a purist, who does not like putting any political statements into the Appropriations Committee’s budget bills. So, the proviso was removed from the budget. This prompted Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston to introduce a series of amendments to put the proviso back into the bill. Her last amendment is intended to ensure that she would have the opportunity to amend the bill when it reaches the last round of debate.

Because so many concerned parents flooded the hearing rooms to oppose the State Board of Education’s newly proposed sex education standards when they were proposed last year, and because the State Board of Education contains activists who are tied to Planned Parenthood and other far Left activist groups, this proviso is necessary to prevent a runaway activist State Board of Education.

Another controversial issue relates to the Perkins County Canal Project contained in LB 1015. In 1923 Colorado and Nebraska signed a compact, allowing Nebraska to divert 500 cubic feet of water per second out of the South Platte River during the non-irrigation season and 120 cubic feet of water per second during the irrigation season, but this requires the building of a canal with a hefty price tag. Building the canal would cost the State $500 million.

Gov. Ricketts had proposed spending $400 million out of the State’s cash reserve fund and using $100 million from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) to pay for it. If the State does nothing, we could face a 90% reduction in the flow of the South Platte River according to the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. Instead of funding the entire project this year, LB 1011 includes $53.5 million for design, permits, and options for purchasing land.

Finally, Gov. Ricketts wants to build a new prison. In his State of the State address, Gov. Ricketts said that our State’s correctional facilities have been underbuilt for the past 40 years. Currently, our facilities can house 5,300 inmates. Building a new correctional facility for $270 million would expand that number to 6,400 inmates.

Those who oppose the building of a new correctional facility complain that the State ought to be looking at correctional reform to reduce recidivism instead of building more prisons. They favor rehabilitation over punishment in our penal system and complain that sentences are too stiff and police make too many arrests. For instance, Sen. John McCollister complained that the number of incarcerations went up when the crime rate was falling. However, doesn’t it also make sense that the crime rate would fall when you take the bad guys off the streets? The fact of the matter is that our corrections system requires both stiff penalties for committing crimes as well as rehabilitation that works, and finding that perfect balance is what lawmakers in Lincoln must do this year.

One of the issues which has concerned me ever since I sat on the Legislature’s HHS Committee is what to do about price benefit managers, otherwise known as PBMs. Price benefit managers are the middlemen who provide our pharmacies with prescription drugs. PBMs negotiate with drug manufacturers on behalf of government health plans, private health plans, and employer-based health insurance plans. The deals they strike with pharmaceutical companies determine the availability of drugs as well as the prices paid for drugs by 266 million Americans.

The problem with PBMs relates to their regulations or lack thereof. PBMs are allowed to charge a fee for their services which usually gets added onto the price of each prescription drug. Certain PBMs have been known to abuse their privilege. For example, in 2021 the Centene Corporation agreed to pay the State of Ohio $88.3 million after the Ohio State Attorney General filed a lawsuit against them, alleging that the PBM overbilled the Ohio Department of Medicaid for its services. When PBMs do their job with integrity, though, it means lower prices and more availability of drugs for everyone.

Last week the Legislature passed LB 767 by Sen. Kolterman of Seward. LB 767 regulates the operations of PBMs doing business within the State of Nebraska. This bill is necessary to protect Nebraska’s consumers against the different ways that PBMs have been known to abuse the system. So, today I would like to highlight three ways that LB 767 will protect consumers from the potential abuses of PBM’s.

First, the bill allows the director of insurance to refuse a PBM license to any applicant who is deemed to be incompetent, untrustworthy, or financially irresponsible. If the PBM violates the insurance laws of Nebraska or any other state, then the director of insurance may deny the application. This will help to ensure that PBMs play by the rules.

Second, LB 767 prohibits PBM’s from making contracts with pharmacists where the pharmacist is prohibited from shopping around for cheaper drugs. In the past, certain PBMs have used this trick to force pharmacists to purchase their more costly drugs. Pharmacists should be free to shop around and to provide their customers with the best deals they can find on prescription drugs. When PBM’s take this option away from pharmacists, they no longer have to compete for sales, and competition is essential for capitalism to thrive.

Third, LB 767 will prevent PBMs from requiring those covered by an insurance policy to purchase more expensive drugs covered by their insurance policy when cheaper drugs are available. For example, if the co-pay for a prescription drug is ten dollars but a cheaper form of the same drug can be purchased for seven dollars, the consumer should have the option to purchase the cheaper drug at seven dollars.

Regulating these PBMs is one way that the Legislature can reduce the cost of prescription drugs for consumers in Nebraska. Many people depend upon prescription drugs for their life, their health, and their well-being. Consequently, anything the Legislature can do to reduce the costs of prescription drugs is warranted and beneficial to the people of Nebraska.

I serve on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee. The Appropriations Committee is charged with the task of putting together the State’s budget. In other words, we decide how the State spends its money, and this year we have a lot of extra money to spend.

Last Thursday the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee finished hearings on 123 bills. That is the highest number of bills ever to be assigned to the Appropriations Committee. The reason we had so many bills this year had to do with the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, otherwise known as ARPA. The federal government has given Nebraska approximately $500 million to spend on ARPA projects this year and another $500 million for next year.

These 123 bills made requests for ARPA funds totaling more than $4 billion! The introducers of these bills would often come before the Appropriations Committee and ask for $100 million.

For example, on Tuesday of last week we had requests totaling $500 million. Then, on Wednesday we had requests for $350 million. Thursday was a slow day. On Thursday we only received requests for $185 million.

Here is an example of some of the requests we get. One request that came in was to give bonuses to every worker in one particular State agency. That State agency asked for $8,500 per employee.

Making decisions about who gets ARPA funds is a difficult task. Some would say I signed up to be on the Appropriations Committee, so suck it up and deal with it. While I agree with that sentiment, I still have to make decisions about where these monies should go.

So, this has been my approach. First, and foremost, ARPA monies should not be used to obligate the State down the road. Most appropriations made to current programs or to starting up a new program will be an ongoing obligation well into the future. Almost all of the introducers of these 123 bills stated at some point during their testimony that their bill would be a one-time expenditure only. But, upon closer examination, I found that very few of these bills ever fit that category.

I took it upon myself to research how often a government program ends once it has been started. The only answer I have been able to find, thus far, is that there may have been one program which was actually allowed to sunset after it was initially funded by the State.

So these so-called “one-time expenditures” will most likely become on-going obligations to our State budget year-after-year once they get approved. Even if we only spent half of the ARPA funds given to us by the federal government, we would grow our state budget by 10 percent.

Growing our state budget by 10 to 20 percent is unacceptable. Once the federal government turns off the spigot to these ARPA funds, the State will be left holding the bag and there will be a lot of pressure for lawmakers to continue funding these programs at ever-increasing higher levels. I’m not saying that some of these programs are not worth funding, but State Legislators need to be mindful of these long-term effects before they go on a shopping spree with other people’s money.

Last Thursday the Revenue Committee advanced my priority bill up to General File, which means that the bill will now get debated on the floor of the Legislature. LR 264 CA is my priority bill, which is a resolution for a constitutional amendment for the consumption tax. If LR 264 CA passes in the Legislature this year, voters will have the opportunity to vote on the ballot initiative to amend the Nebraska State Constitution in November. Before we can pass any legislation to rollout the consumption tax, the Nebraska State Constitution must first be amended.

Nebraska’s tax system is broken and needs to be replaced. We can no longer afford to fix our broken tax system through slow, incremental legislative changes. Young people are leaving the State, the elderly cannot afford to live here, and companies struggle to find employees.

Nebraska’s tax system needs to be blown up! Iowa has now set the example for Nebraska. In the period from 2011 through 2020 Iowa experienced 155 farm bankruptcies, so their state legislators decided that it was time to do something drastic. Last week Iowa Legislators passed legislation to implement a 3.9 percent flat rate income tax. While the consumption is far superior to the income tax, Iowa’s legislators demonstrated the same kind of resolve that Nebraska’s State Senators need to exhibit in order to fix our broken tax code. Like Iowa, the time has come for Nebraska to do something drastic.

If Nebraska converts to the consumption tax, our citizens will be better off than Iowa’s citizens in three ways, and today I would like to show you three ways that the consumption tax is superior to Iowa’s flat rate income tax.

First, people should only be taxed once. While Iowa eliminated taxes on retirement income, they retained their state sales tax, the excise tax, and their property tax in addition to their flat rate income tax. To the contrary, LR 264 CA would repeal all taxes, except for the consumption tax and the excise tax. Under the consumption tax a good or service can only be taxed under the consumption tax or the excise tax, but never under both.

Second, people should know how much they pay in taxes to the State. Although Iowa has adopted a flat rate income tax, their tax code remains complicated and is not readily apparent to taxpayers. Iowans will never know how much they really pay to the State in taxes each year. By imposing so many different kinds of taxes on the people, Iowans have to be accountants to know how much they pay in taxes each year. To the contrary, under the consumption tax retail receipts would be required to report the taxes paid for every new good or service purchased for consumption in Nebraska.

Third, taxes should never impede investment. By taxing the income of its citizens, Iowa limits the ability of its citizens to invest their hard-earned money. The income tax always leaves the taxpayer with less money to invest. To the contrary, the consumption tax never taxes investments and always leaves open the option to invest one’s hard-earned money before paying taxes. The consumption tax gives each citizen the option to either invest their income or to pay taxes. Consequently, the consumption tax encourages savings and investment, whereas the income tax, including the flat tax, does not.

As you can see, the time has come to replace Nebraska’s broken tax system with one that works. While Iowa has taken a step in the right direction, their solution does not resolve all of their tax problems. By passing the consumption tax, Nebraska would have the best tax code in the nation.

Whenever a bill in the Nebraska State Legislature receives no opposition testimony at its public hearing and the committee members all support the bill, it becomes eligible for the consent calendar. The Speaker of the Legislature is the keeper of the consent calendar. Once the Speaker of the Legislature decides to place a bill on the consent calendar, it gets only 15 minutes of debate on the floor of the Legislature. Today I would like to tell you about four bills of mine that I have requested the Speaker to place on the consent calendar.

The first bill that qualifies for the consent calendar is LB 742. This is a bill which allows public bodies to store their meeting minutes electronically. Prior to this year Nebraska State Statutes were unclear about allowing public bodies to store their meeting minutes electronically. Some lawyers read the law as only allowing K-12 public school boards and Educational Service Units to store their meeting minutes electronically. LB 742 clarifies the law so that all public bodies can store their meeting minutes electronically.

LB 744 is another candidate for the consent calendar. I introduced this bill to clarify how the Brand Committee was intending to regulate electronic identification and inspection of cattle. The bill as originally written would have prevented the Brand Committee from implementing their plan. However, after talking with the members of the Brand Committee, I learned about their need to protect the privacy of cattlemen. So, I changed the entire nature of this bill with an amendment. This amendment, which now becomes the bill, protects the private information of cattlemen. This kind of sensitive information will no longer be available to those who want to adversely disrupt Nebraska’s ranching operations.

The next consent calendar bill is LB 1122, a bill that will permit land surveyors to enter private lands. Because many landowners live out of state, getting permission to enter private lands for surveying purposes has become a problem. For example, when private surveyors need to find section corners they may have to travel several miles from the original site in order to find a reference point marker. Surveyors may not know which properties they need to access and getting permission from every landowner delays the time it takes for them to complete their work. So, LB 1122 allows land surveyors to access private lands lawfully. The bill also holds them accountable for any damages they might do to property or crops while doing their work.

Finally, LB 1124 allows heirs to avoid probate court. This bill raises the maximum value of personal property in a deceased person’s estate from $50,000 to $200,000 for small estate affidavits. Small estate affidavits are used to avoid probate court whenever a deceased person has no will or living trust. This bill will save Nebraska’s heirs thousands of dollars in unnecessary legal fees. To my surprise no lawyers came out to oppose this bill!

The ideas for these consent calendar bills came from constituents who just needed some help. It has been an honor to serve the people of Western Nebraska, and it always makes my job more rewarding when I know that my bills are easing the burden of government for the people of Nebraska.

One of the bills that I have co-signed this year is LB 773. This bill would authorize private citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. Currently, the Concealed Handgun Permit Act allows cities to restrict the concealing of a handgun only to authorized permit holders. LB 773 would allow all Nebraskans to conceal their weapons anywhere in the state without having to carry such a permit. However, the bill would not apply to those who have already been prohibited from carrying a handgun either by law or by the courts.

So, why is LB 773 so important? To start, the U.S. Constitution guarantees to the citizens of the United States the right to keep and to bear arms without government infringement upon that right. Generally, the rights contained in the Bill of Rights should not be infringed upon by governments. The right to keep and to bear arms is a universal right with exceptions made only for those who abuse that right. Laws which place undue burdens upon law-abiding citizens to use firearms are out of bounds.

The primary reason that people choose to conceal a handgun is for personal protection. According to the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of gun owners cited self-defense as their top reason for owning a firearm in a 2017 survey. Article 1-1 of the Nebraska State Constitution guarantees to Nebraskans the right to keep and to bear arms for the purpose of “defense of self, family, home and others.” Moreover, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2008 in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, and again in 2010 in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago that citizens of the United States have a fundamental right to use firearms for personal protection. As the Boy Scout motto says, those who carry firearms for personal protection do so simply to “be prepared.”

Police reaction time is often much too slow. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics the average reaction time it takes for police to respond to an incident is 19 minutes. Even when that reaction time is cut in half, nine minutes can be a lot of time to wait when someone is pointing a gun at you. Once a gun gets introduced into a conflict, seconds matter. Allowing people to conceal their own weapons for personal protection evens the playing field between criminals and law-abiding citizens.

Nebraska’s Concealed Handgun Permit Act contains four restrictions which I believe undermine and place undue hardship upon Nebraskans who own handguns. In order to get a conceal-carry handgun permit in Nebraska, a handgun owner must pay a $100 fee, pass a handgun and safety training course approved by the Nebraska State Patrol, get fingerprinted, and submit their application in person to the Nebraska State Patrol.

These restrictions are wrong. Charging a fee to practice a right contained in the 2nd Amendment and the Nebraska State Constitution undermines that practice as a fundamental right. Passing a government approved handgun and safety course constitutes a gross form of government infringement upon that right. Getting fingerprinted constitutes a violation of one’s personal right to privacy. Finally, submitting the application in person poses an undue burden upon Nebraskans, especially those who live in rural areas far away from the nearest office of the Nebraska State Patrol.

I am not alone in supporting LB 773. Besides Sen. Tom Brewer, who introduced the bill, LB 773 has 20 other co-sponsors! Seldom does a bill ever get this kind of widespread support in the Unicameral Legislature. Nebraskans love their 2nd Amendment rights and LB 773 is a bill that I believe the majority of Nebraskans would like to see become a law.

Last Thursday the Legislature’s Revenue Committee held a public hearing at the Capitol on LR264CA, which is my resolution for a constitutional amendment for the consumption tax. The resolution would put an initiative for the consumption tax on the ballot for the November 8 election. The time has come for the citizens of Nebraska to be given the opportunity to decide how they should be taxed.

I would like to begin by saying thank you to all those who drove to Lincoln to testify in person at the public hearing. I am honored that so many people came out to support this resolution. Moreover, the testimonies they gave covered a wide range of relevant topics without repeating the same concerns.

The public hearing was a huge success. 29 citizens came out to testify in favor of the consumption tax. Not a single private citizens came out to testify in person against the consumption tax. In addition, 75 supporters of the consumption tax submitted online comments for the public record.

The lobbyists who testified against the consumption tax did a very poor job. These lobbyists were all paid to oppose the consumption tax, and each one proved that they had not read the bill, could not perform basic math skills, tried to deceive the members of the Revenue Committee, or did all three. Below are three examples of the kind of ridiculous and invalid testimonies offered by these lobbyists.

Mr. Brian Slone, who represents the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce & Industry, told the Revenue Committee that the State of Nebraska would have to collect $124,000 from every household in Nebraska in order for the consumption tax to be revenue neutral. That’s ridiculous! There are 759,000 households in Nebraska according to the latest census, so his numbers don’t come close to adding up. I’ll let you do the math to see how far off he really was.

A. Loy Todd Jr., representing the Nebraska New Car and Truck Dealers Association, tried to make the case that the State would lose money because people would buy their new cars across state lines; however, I reminded the members of the Revenue Committee in my closing comments that it does not matter where you purchase a new car because the taxes are paid, not at the car dealership, but at the courthouse! Therefore, the State would not lose so much as a dime.

Kent Rogert who represented the wine industry and who asked who would want to buy used wine (what exactly is used wine?), tried to make the case that wine would be double-taxed. He claimed that wine would first be subject to the consumption tax and then subject to the excise tax on alcohol. Rogert clearly did not read our bill or understand how the consumption tax works, because the consumption tax only taxes a good or service one time. Goods and services are classified as either subject to the consumption tax or subject to the excise tax, but never to both.

Finally, the biggest problem which has dogged the consumption tax ever since I first introduced it has been the premium tax on insurance policies. Currently, Nebraska imposes a very low one percent premium tax on insurance policies. The worry has been that if insurance policies were subjected to the consumption tax, then the insurance premium tax rate would increase to 8.97 percent or 5.5 percent for the rate after the pre-bate gets factored in.

The good news is that we have solved the insurance premium tax problem. When the Beacon Hill Institute published their dynamic study on the consumption tax for the State of Nebraska back in January 2021 they did not include the insurance premium tax in their calculations for the consumption tax rate. Moreover, the insurance premium tax qualifies as a kind of excise tax. Because the insurance premium tax is an excise tax, it cannot be made subject to the consumption tax. By rule, no good or service may be taxed twice under the consumption tax. Therefore, the insurance premium tax would remain (just as it currently is) at one percent under our proposal.

Not a single lobbyist was able to make a coherent or legitimate criticism against the consumption tax. Even the Open Sky Institute failed to show the committee members that they had actually read our plan because they falsely accused it of promoting a regressive tax. As you can see, there really are no good reasons to oppose the consumption tax. The consumption tax would solve all of our tax problems, make Nebraska the most tax friendly state in the Union, and create economic growth like we’ve never seen before.