A new poll found that 31 percent of adults are bored with their usual Christmas traditions. Instead of sending Christmas cards, exchanging gifts, or decorating a Christmas tree, these individuals would rather spend Christmas Day in their pajamas, go on a quiet, personal retreat, or order take-out instead of preparing a traditional turkey dinner. While none of these ideas sound particularly appealing to me, I understand that times are changing.

Christmas traditions evolve over time and that’s just the reality of the situation. For example, nobody I know today attends church 12 days in a row like the Puritans did centuries ago in Great Britain, nor do I know of anyone who celebrates Christmas Day by shooting their guns into the air like Lewis and Clark did on Christmas Day during their voyage to the Pacific Ocean, nor do I know of anyone who actually eats figgy pudding. Instead, these Christmas traditions have all fallen by the wayside and have been replaced by new traditions.

Some Christmas traditions probably deserve to be changed. For example, why are Christmas angels always portrayed as blond females when all of the angels in the Bible are described as males? Why do Nativity scenes always depict the magi in the stable when Matthew 2:11 says they visited the Christ child at his house? And, why do we always sing about three kings from the Orient when the Bible merely describes them as magi from the east?

The 21st Century is bound to give us a variety of new Christmas traditions. In fact, we are already beginning to see and experience some of these new traditions, and many of them are much more appealing to me than gathering for an ugly Christmas sweater office party. For example, today many cities have professional drive-through Christmas light displays, some families have started doing their own DIY Nativity puppet shows, and children have begun feeding Santa’s reindeer by laying out carrots and celery next to Santa’s cookies before going to bed on Christmas Eve.

Christmas traditions are important. Christmas traditions play several vital roles in our lives. Christmas traditions are important for bringing family and friends together at a time when we are less likely to venture out of the house due to cold and snow. Christmas traditions help build the family by fostering togetherness and unity. Christmas traditions give people the opportunity to express love and affection for one another. Christmas traditions provide us with festivity and fun and create life-long memories that we cherish for the rest of our lives. But, the most important role that traditions play comes in reminding us about the original purpose of the holiday.

More than anything else, Christmas retells the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, who became the savior of all mankind. Oddly, the birth of Jesus was completely void of any kind of trappings, decorations, or even traditions. Recreating what actually happened that night would make for some very odd Christmas traditions. What kind of tradition would it be for a woman to give birth to a child outdoors on December 25th and then lay the newborn baby in a feeding trough? Who invites shepherds to their Christmas party? What pastor can summon a choir of angels to sing at his church’s Christmas Eve service?

As odd as the events surrounding Jesus’s birth were, they had deep theological significance. The prophet Isaiah referred to him as Immanuel, meaning God with us. The incarnation of Jesus at his birth signified God becoming man in order to save humanity from the problem of sin and damnation. Because Jesus grew up and was eventually crucified, he became the perfect atonement for the sins of the world, and because he rose from the dead, those who put their trust in him will also rise from the dead and experience everlasting life.

How would you like to pause your property taxes? You know, like going 15 or 20 years without paying any additional property taxes so you could put a new roof on the house or remodel the bathroom. Wouldn’t that be nice? Well, that’s exactly how city officials get to do business in Nebraska. They do this through a very loosely governed program known as Tax Increment Financing (TIF).

Under the current state statutes which govern TIF, city officials can declare any area they so desire as “blighted.” Once an area has been designated as blighted, loans can be secured and structures can be renovated; however, the property taxes won’t increase for the next 15 years in these blighted areas, or 20 years for extremely blighted areas.

The original purpose of TIF was for the renovation of old, dilapidated buildings and to help improve the economic development of a city’s commercial district. However, LB25 (2021), expanded the use of TIF dollars to include the construction of new workforce housing. Proponents of LB25 argue that TIF financing can reduce the value of a home by $50,000, making it more affordable. However, we should ask: “Should government really be in the business of building new workforce housing?” For example, how can a regular developer compete against another developer who gets $50,000 in TIF monies to construct a new house? I submit that this is only a problem because our property taxes are too high.

Many of Nebraska’s cities now abuse TIF. Cities now use TIF dollars to lure new industries, while businesses use TIF as a negotiating tool. The TIF laws are poorly written and give cities too much latitude. For example, the City of Omaha recently approved TIF financing for a new streetcar project which required the entire swath of the 50-block streetcar route to be declared as a blighted area.

By now you may be asking yourself, “So what?” or “Why should it matter as long as these TIF projects are improving the overall economic development of the city and will eventually result in more property tax dollars coming into the city down the road?” Well, State Auditor, Mike Foley, is not so easily convinced. In a letter about TIF financing addressed to the Nebraska Legislature dated September 10, 2024, Foley said, “When overused or misused, however, this popular financing tool risks undermining the interests of local property taxpayers.” Foley continued by saying, “The core concern seems to be ensuring that TIF is applied properly, in strict accordance with the law and in a manner that properly balances economic development needs and reasonable property tax burdens on citizens.”

TIF has simply become too popular with cities. Consider how TIF financing has doubled within the last decade. In 2014 only a little more that $60 million had been approved in TIF financing. This amount grew incrementally each year thereafter so that by 2023 a little more than $120 million had been approved for TIF projects. The number of TIF projects also doubled during that same decade. When this rise in TIF financing is analyzed against the backdrop of skyrocketing property taxes, the alarm bells begin ringing uncontrollably.

One of the major problems with TIF concerns enforcement of the state statutes. Foley has identified numerous violations of TIF financing, but the laws governing TIF financing lack teeth and regulatory enforcement. Consider, for example, that TIF monies should only be made available for properties where at least half of the parcel has been in the city limits for 40 years, but there is no penalty for violating that law.

Next week I plan to attend a hearing on LR416, an interim study by Sen. Robert Dover of Norfolk (LD19). The purpose of the hearing to explore the return on investment on TIF dollars used to fund workforce housing. I have never been in favor of the government funding workforce housing.

Don’t you wish your personal finances worked like the State of Nebraska’s? If they did, you would never run out of cash. Recently, Nebraska’s Tax Rate Review Committee projected a budgetary shortfall of $432 million for the 2026-2027 biennium. This amounts to $490 million less than what was projected to come into the state’s coffers at the conclusion of this year’s legislative session back in May. While these kinds of numbers might seem overwhelming and even shocking to you, they are really just a drop in the bucket compared to the kinds of cash that the State of Nebraska keeps tucked away where nobody is looking.

There is no need to run for the hills. The sky is not falling. The State of Nebraska is really doing just fine as far as money goes. The dirty little trade secret which comes with being a Nebraska State Senator is knowing how much money the State of Nebraska actually has on hand, and I am not talking about the state’s rainy-day fund, which was projected to reach $903 million by the end of the 2024-2025 fiscal year. The State of Nebraska has access to billions of dollars beyond the revenues deposited into the state’s General Fund and into the state’s rain-day fund.

The secret treasure chest that I am referring to are the cash funds which belong to each of our state agencies. Currently, the Nebraska State Treasurer is holding onto approximately $9.5 billion in state agency cash funds. These are unused monies. Prior to 2003, the State of Nebraska deposited the interest from these cash funds into the state’s General Fund. After 2003 the rule changed, allowing the interest earned to remain in their respective agency cash funds, earning compounding interest.

Let me give you a little perspective now on what has happened over the years. We will start in the year 2003 and move in three-year increments. In December 2003 these agency cash funds totaled $1.3 billion. By December 2006 that number rose to $2.3 billion. In December 2009 the number was $2.7 billion. In December 2012 the number was $3.3 billion. In December 2015 it was $3.8 billion. Then, in 2017 the State of Nebraska found itself with a budgetary deficit of $1.1 billion. We paid for that deficit, not by cutting spending, but by sweeping some of these agency cash funds. Sweeping those cash funds had little effect, because by December 2018 the agency cash funds totaled almost $3.7 billion. Today, those agency cash funds are worth $9.5 billion!

In order to give you a little more perspective, let’s consider the cash funds belonging to the Game and Parks Commission. The Game and Parks Commission currently has almost $265 million of unused revenue sitting in their cash funds. To be fair, some of these cash funds are restricted and cannot be swept. Nevertheless, the Game and Parks Commission will earn 2.92 percent interest on that money this year yielding an increase of $7.75 million. Don’t you wish you could earn that much money in interest next year for your Christmas club account?

The bottom line is that the State of Nebraska won’t have to cut their budget or reduce their spending habits next year when they prepare the next biennial budget for the state. Instead, all that needs to be done is to sweep some of these agency cash funds. For example, if the State of Nebraska took just five percent of the revenue held in these agency cash funds, they would generate an additional $475 million in revenue for the state’s General Fund, which is more than what is needed to make up for the projected budgetary shortfall of $432 million.

I share these things with you today in order to show you how much money the State of Nebraska really has on hand. Not only can the State of Nebraska make up for the projected $432 million budgetary shortfall, but they also have the means to pay for the lost 2023 property tax credit when they (not me) voted for and passed LB 34, the property tax relief bill from Legislature’s special summer session. So, don’t let State Senators lead you to believe that they cannot cover the budgetary shortfall and also reinstate the lost 2023 property tax credit. We need to hold the Legislature accountable.

This week I would like to bring your attention to a tax problem that many who read my articles may not be aware of. On November 22 I attended a joint hearing of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee and Revenue Committee at the State Capitol in Lincoln. The purpose of this annual joint hearing is to receive reports from the Nebraska Department of Revenue on the tax policies of the State. Of particular interest to me was an update on the State’s tax incentive programs.

I have been asked why a lame duck Senator from the Panhandle would travel all the way to Lincoln for a two-hour hearing just to receive tax information that won’t have any legislative bearing on him next year? The answer to that question has to do with the oath of office that I took on my first day as a Nebraska State Senator. As far as I am concerned, that oath of office runs clear through to the finish line. I will remain a Nebraska State Senator until my term formally expires on January 8, 2025.

There are two major reasons why Nebraska has and will continue to implement tax incentive programs. The first reason has to do with the overall tax burden of Nebraskans. Our taxes are simply too high. Business do not want to move to Nebraska because of our over-burdensome tax code. The second reason has to do with competition from other states. Because other states have tax incentive programs to lure businesses to their state, Nebraska has to have similar tax incentive programs in order to stay competitive with those other states.

Nebraska’s first major tax incentive program came in 1987 through LB 775 and is known as the Employment and Investment Growth Act. Over the years this tax incentive program has paid out refunds and tax credits in excess of $4 billion. Currently, there remains 28 outstanding contracts. In 2024 $10 million in tax credits were claimed; however, the total amount of credits from these contracts yet to be claimed amounts to $45.6 million.

The next tax incentive program that I would like to tell you about came in 2005 through LB 312 and is known as the Nebraska Advantage Act. One of the main goals of the Nebraska Advantage Act was to incentivize ConAgra to keep their headquarters located in Omaha. As you may recall, ConAgra moved their headquarters to Chicago on October 1, 2015. So, the program worked very well!

As of June 30, 2024 the total amount of tax incentives earned by the Nebraska Advantage Act was $2.39 billion. This tax incentive program will average a net loss of more credits than tax income of over $150 million per year for at least the next 10 years. The program is now costing the State of Nebraska more than $120,000 in tax incentives for every job that it creates. Currently the Nebraska Advantage Act has tax credits or refunds yet to be claimed in excess of $1.3 billion.

I am confident that by now you have figured out that these tax incentive programs don’t work and are really nothing more than a shell game for big businesses in Nebraska. Again, we implement these tax incentive programs for reasons that make no sense at all. The most serious issue with these tax incentive programs is that they are designed to pick winners. The losers are the ones who don’t qualify for the tax incentive programs. Those businesses which are ineligible to benefit from these tax incentive programs cannot compete with the ones who are eligible.

This may come as no surprise to those who frequently read my column, but the tax system in Nebraska is completely broken. Unless legislators in Lincoln do something to stop this government waste and become the state of choice where people choose to live, not because of some government tax incentive program, but because our taxes are fair, open, and transparent, Nebraska will only fall deeper into this tax incentive hole. There is only one solution that I know of to fix this problem and discontinue this tax and spend policy that we currently operate under, and that is that we must change the way we tax people and implement a consumption tax that allows the taxpayer to pay the taxes they can afford to pay when they consume something. The Epic Option Consumption Tax is the answer.

A song by CeCe Winans entitled the “Goodness of God” speaks about how God’s goodness runs after us. God’s goodness always seeks what is best for us. We may not be aware of God’s goodness, but it is still there nevertheless. When things go awry or when we don’t get what we want, God’s goodness is not to blame. Evil and suffering do exist in the world, but God is not the creator of evil and suffering; instead, God’s goodness seeks to overcome all of the evil and suffering in the world, and we are told in the Bible that God’s goodness will ultimately prevail over it and will eradicate all of it someday.

When we are honest with ourselves, we are able to look back on our lives and see how God’s goodness has provided for us over the years and how his providential care has preserved us up until the present day. The mere fact that we able to read these words today or take our next breath is testimony of God’s goodness towards us. Even at death, God promises good things for those who love him. For example, the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”

This is a week for giving thanks. While being grateful is an attitude which ought to mark our lives continuously throughout each and every day, the reality is that ruinous emotions have a way of creeping their way into our hearts and changing our good attitude for the worse. The way to overcome those ruinous emotions is to count your many blessings. Being grateful is an attitude which does not always come to us naturally; instead, it takes discipline. Growing a grateful heart is like growing a flower. It must be watered, fertilized, and be given plenty of sunshine.

When we take the time to nurture a truly grateful heart, we bless others around us. Nobody likes to be around a sour puss, but a truly grateful person can light up a dark room faster than turning on a light bulb from a switch. I suspect that most of us would prefer to be the kind of person who lights up a room, rather than being the one who darkens it. Therefore, let the light of your grateful heart shine bright this year as you gather with family and friends to return thanks to God for the many good things he has done for you this past year.

So, what am I grateful for this year? I am grateful for each and everyone of you. Because of the good people of Legislative District 47, I have been able to serve in the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature for the past eight years. Without your vote, this would not have been possible. My term in office is quickly coming to an end, but it has been my privilege and my joy to represent each and every one of you in the State Legislature. So, thank you for voting for me and thank you for giving me such an outstanding opportunity to serve the great state of Nebraska.

CO2 sequestration will soon become a major problem for land owners in Nebraska. When the State Legislature passed LB 650 on Final Reading back in 2021, I was the only State Senator who voted against the bill. Those State Senators who voted for the bill will soon begin regretting their decision to have voted for the bill. So, today I would like to tell you about another reason why LB 650 was such a bad idea and why it will soon be haunting State Senators as well as land owners all across our state.

The companies who want to build CO2 sequestration pipelines in Nebraska, such as Tallgrass, Summit, and others, have little regard for the rights of landowners and will use the law to their advantage to build their CO2 pipelines against the wishes of land owners in Nebraska. In short, LB 650 allows CO2 sequestration companies to infringe on the rights of landowners. Let me explain.

Nebraska State Statute 76-725 specifically states that eminent domain can only be used by the State of Nebraska to acquire lands “necessary for any state use.” Our forefathers in Nebraska understood that private ownership of property was a basic and sacred right of the people, and that private lands should never be seized by corporations or private businesses for the purposes of creating wealth.

The lobbyists and lawyers who convinced former Nebraska State Senator, Mike Flood, to introduce LB 650 understood this full well. So, when LB 650 was written, it was written in such a way as to make CO2 sequestration a matter of the “public interest,” but we should ask: Is the underground storage of carbon dioxide really a matter of the public interest?

Language matters. LB 650 begins with these words, “The Legislature finds, recognizes, and declares, that it is in the public interest to promote the geologic storage of carbon dioxide. Doing so will benefit the state and the global environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and will help ensure the viability of the state’s energy and power industries, to the economic benefit of Nebraska and its citizens.” (There is no scientific proof that CO2 sequestration will do any of this!) This language is important, though, because it opens the door for the use of eminent domain by CO2 sequestration companies.

CO2 sequestration companies are for-profit businesses who plan to make billions of dollars through federal government subsidies and tax credits. While there is currently only about 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines in the United States, CO2 companies are projected to build a total of 100,000 miles of CO2 pipelines across the United States, most of which will cut directly through agricultural lands. The Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act is paying for it all and is set to fund the building of these pipelines with billions of dollars of taxpayer monies.

The building of CO2 pipelines would never succeed in a purely free-market economy. The entire industry is dependent upon these federally funded taxpayer dollars. Because the industry is entirely dependent upon these federal subsidies and tax credits, it raises the question of what would happen once the federal spigot gets turned off. There is good reason to believe that both Congress and the Trump Administration may act to put an end to the program. Once that happens, who will maintain the CO2 pipelines which have already been built?

62 accidents have already been reported with CO2 pipelines. When CO2 pipelines explode, they release powerful and toxic amounts of carbon dioxide, which have already been known to kill some Americans. Consequently, without some kind of private funding, the maintenance on these CO2 sequestration pipelines could potentially become an unfunded mandate imposed on the American people for decades.

Folks in Nebraska need to get involved with this issue now. Citizens need to familiarize themselves with the zoning laws of their county, attend county board meetings, and share their concerns about CO2 pipelines with their elected officials. Likewise, citizens need to be made aware of the effects that CO2 pipelines will have on their community and elected officials need to respect the concerns of the people who elected them into office.

The election of 2024 will go down in history as one of the worst abuses of rhetoric ever used in American political history. As bad as they were, the abuses of rhetoric were not limited to political candidates or pundits in the media; instead, they found their way into some of our most sacred government institutions. For example, following the presidential election on November 5 someone working for the United States Selective Service posted on the agency’s online X account a message suggesting the United States was now turning into 1936 Nazi Germany. The FBI is investigating the post. Rhetoric of this kind is not only false, but it is inflammatory, unprofessional, divisive, and morally wrong.

When I reflect on what Americans should take away from the election of 2024, what comes to my mind first of all is that American’s are not stupid and they do not like to be told what they must believe. The election of 2024 was marred by so many lies, half-truths, and personal attacks that it forced voters to walk away from all of the meaningless rhetoric and to think for themselves, and they did just that. American voters no longer listened to or cared when political candidates were cast as a racist hate-mongering bigots, as Hitler-like dictators, or even as convicted felons. These kinds of personal attacks no longer work in American politics.

What the election of 2024 so aptly demonstrated is that the American people are done with identity politics. Gone are the days when American voters will vote for or against a person on the basis of who they are. Voters don’t care about skin color or sex, nor do they care about what their favorite actor, television personality, or musician has to say about political candidates. Labels no longer matter. The election of 2024 effectively liberated the American people from the stranglehold of identity politics that the mainstream media has imposed upon them for the past 50 years.

The election of 2024 was won on the basis of policy rather than personal identity or meaningless rhetoric. In the final analysis, the majority of American voters decided who to vote for based upon each candidate’s policy platform. This time around, the wild passions of the heart had to yield to the facts of reality and give way to those time-tested and common-sense solutions which work best for restoring prosperity, reducing inflation, curbing out-of-control crime, and preventing World War III. In short, the presidential election of 2024 was won because one candidate stood out as better able to articulate good common-sense solutions to the kinds of problems that Americans want fixed.

The situation was no different here in Nebraska, especially in regards to the Unicameral Legislature. Voters in Nebraska voted to retain a filibuster proof-majority for Republicans in the supposedly non-partisan State Legislature. Overall, voters in Nebraska refused to listen to the meaningless campaign rhetoric which flooded their mailboxes, newspapers, television sets, radios, and the Internet, and chose instead to vote for State Senators who would best grow our state’s economy, keep our people safe, protect our constitutional rights, and uphold our traditional values.

Nebraska was not immune to controversy this year. For example, voters passed ballot measures to legalize medical marijuana, to repeal school choice, and to protect women and children. Regardless of where you might stand on such controversial issues, my hope and my prayer is that we can all learn to discuss and debate these kinds of policy matters in respectful ways without resorting the kinds of meaningless rhetoric and personal attacks which marred this year’s election. So, when you gather with family and friends this year for Thanksgiving dinner, remember that the only identification that really matters is that the person you are conversing with at the dinner table is a human being created in the image of God.

CO2, otherwise known as carbon dioxide, is good for the earth. Climate change fanatics would have you believe that CO2 is somehow bad for our planet, but it is not. “Carbon pollution” was a term made up by environmental extremists, who have a political agenda to end CO2 emissions caused by combustion engines and the burning of carbon-based fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas. Not only is carbon dioxide good for us, it is also in short supply.

In 2021, when the Nebraska State Legislature voted to pass LB650, the Nebraska Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide Act, I was the only State Senator in the Unicameral Legislature who voted against the bill on Final Reading. I voted against the bill because it defied common-sense. Not only is it foolish to try to store carbon dioxide underground, we already knew at that time that plants need carbon dioxide to grow.

Carbon dioxide cannot be effectively stored underground. Since the passage of LB650 in 2021, we have learned a lot about storing CO2 underground. According to Steve Goreham, the author of Green Breakdown, CO2 always leaks back into the atmosphere, and no carbon storage facility in operation has ever been able to capture enough CO2 to make a difference in managing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. So, trying to store CO2 underground amounts to an exercise in futility.

Plants need carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is plant food. This is a basic fact of biology. Moreover, CO2 released from combustion engines and power plants has resulted in the greening of our planet over time. What the environmental extremists won’t ever tell you is that in 2016 a very important paper was published by 32 authors from 24 different institutions in eight countries, which analyzed satellite data from around the world and concluded that global green vegetation had increased by 14 percent over the course of the previous 30 years. A more recent study shows that 55 percent of the global land mass is now experiencing an “accelerated rate” of vegetation growth while only 7.3 percent of the earth’s global land mass is in decline or “browning.”

What all of this accelerated vegetation growth means is that the earth needs more CO2, not less. Contrary to popular opinion nowadays, the earth needs more carbon dioxide, but don’t take this from me; instead, listen to Dr. Roy Spenser, a former senior scientist with NASA, who said, “Though CO2 is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere.” Because Nebraska is largely an agricultural state, the corn, soybeans, and wheat that we grow in our state must compete for that “precious little” amount of carbon dioxide which remains in the atmosphere.

So, what about global warming? Won’t releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere cause global warming? Actually, just the opposite is true. It turns out that increases in vegetation growth on the earth have a cooling effect, rather than a warming effect. Another study released in February 2020 shows that the greening of the earth is now expected to offset 17 years of carbon emissions by the year 2100. That fact is now expected to put the earth’s carbon levels below the target set by the Paris Agreement.

The State of Wyoming is now getting out of the carbon sequestration business. Project Bison, a massive Wyoming carbon sequestration project slated to begin in 2025, was recently halted in that state. The primary reason for pulling the plug on the project was the EPA’s 1,020 page set of rules for governing power plants and the sequestration of carbon dioxide. Rather than making use of common-sense, the EPA, which is politically driven by the Biden Administration’s Green New Deal, is inadvertently regulating states right out of the business of carbon sequestration.

I share these things with you today in order to shed the light of truth on a political agenda, which actually has no good grounding in science nor in common-sense. Plants need carbon dioxide to grow just as humans and animals need oxygen to breathe. Denying trees and plants of their most essential life-giving chemical element is just a very bad idea, especially for Nebraska.

One of the measures that will appear on the November 5 ballot is a referendum to repeal LB1402, otherwise known as Nebraska’s school choice bill. A vote to repeal on Measure 435 would effectively end the school choice program started by LB1402. Because all families must pay property taxes to their local public school district, I believe parents should be given the opportunity to choose where to send their children to school. Therefore, I support voting to retain Measure 435.

The education lobby has been hammering the airwaves and the Internet with commercials that are designed to garner support to repeal the new school choice law in Nebraska, but these advertisements are very misleading. Therefore, I would like to begin by exposing the three most misleading statements that are being spread about Nebraska’s school choice law.

The organization Support Our Schools Nebraska is currently running advertisements which say that LB1402 “shifts money from public schools to private schools” and that monies appropriated to pay for private schools “could force cuts to public schools to pay for it.” These statements simply are not true. These statements are false because public school districts are funded by local property tax dollars, not through the State’s General Fund. Property taxes are paid to the county, not to the State. In order for these statements to be true, the primary source of funding for public school districts would have to be the same as the source of funding for educational scholarships, and they are not the same. To the contrary, LB1402 appropriates $10 million per year from the State’s General Fund to the State Treasurer for the purpose of providing educational scholarships to students attending private schools. As long as public schools continue to receive their funding locally, and not from the State, there is no direct connection between funding for public schools and funding for educational scholarships.

Support Our Schools Nebraska also misleads the public by insinuating that LB1402 provides no oversight over monies paid to private schools. The advertisement says, “The voucher bill spends $100 million on private schools over ten years with no accountability or oversight of our tax dollars.” That statement is false because LB1402 does not spend any money on private schools; instead, the money is given to students in the form of scholarship grants. In other words, the program funds students rather than schools, which is the way it ought to be.

Finally, Support Our Schools Nebraska makes use of fear mongering tactics in order to scare voters into voting to repeal Measure 435. For example, Support Our Schools Nebraska is currently running an advertisement which says that Nebraska’s school choice program will cause Nebraska’s public schools to have “larger class sizes, fewer resources, less teacher pay, and higher property taxes.” Support Our Schools Nebraska ties their argument once again to how the school choice program receives its funding. The fact of the matter is that Support Our Schools Nebraska cannot validate any of their disastrous predictions about public education in Nebraska without first admitting that there is no connection whatsoever between how the school choice program is funded versus how public schools are funded. There is no way for their disastrous predictions to come true because the school choice program receives its money from the State and never intrudes on local funding for the public schools.

As you can see, the organization Support Our Schools Nebraska has not dealt forthrightly with voters concerning Measure 435. Educators love to brag about how well public education is doing in Nebraska. For example, you may have heard recently about how Nebraska’s students have out-performed their peers in other states on the ACT exam. While that statement is technically true, Nebraska’s ACT scores have been consistently falling over the years. For instance, when I first became a Nebraska State Senator eight years ago, the average ACT score in Nebraska was 21.5. This year’s average was only 19.1! So, rather than taking money away from students who want to attend a private school and better their education, shouldn’t we be holding our public schools accountable for failing Nebraska’s students? Nebraska needs school choice. On November 5, please vote to retain Measure 435.

Two ballot measures will appear on the November 5 ballot which concern the subject of abortion. Initiative 439 is known as the “Right to Abortion Initiative,” and would amend the Nebraska State Constitution, establishing abortion as a right up to the point of “fetal viability”. On the other side of the abortion issue is Initiative 434, also known as the “Protect Women and Children Initiative.” Initiative 434 would amend the Nebraska State Constitution to protect unborn children from abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy, except in cases of medical emergencies, rape and incest. Initiative 434 closely mirrors what State Senators did in 2023 when they passed LB574, which I voted for and continue to support.

Earlier this year a third ballot measure failed to get enough signatures to be placed on the November 5 ballot. That ballot initiative would have amended the Nebraska State Constitution to define a preborn child as a person at each stage of development within the womb; thus, making all abortions illegal. While I agree in principle that an unborn child is a person and that abortion is not a God-given right, I don’t believe the moral pulse of Nebraska is ready to pass such sweeping legislation. The fact that the ballot initiative failed to get enough signatures to appear on the November 5 ballot validates this point.

Overall Nebraska continues to be a Pro-Life state, and that is why we need to pass Initiative 434, the Protect Women and Children Initiative, and put some much-needed limitations on abortions. The language of Initiative 434 has been so carefully worded so as not to prevent the Legislature from passing further restrictions on abortions in the future, but allowing Initiative 439 to pass most certainly would! Because the language of Initiative 439 is so strong and would amend the Nebraska State Constitution by making abortion a fundamental right, it would make it nearly impossible for State Senators in the future to ever put restrictions of any kind on abortions.

This is important when you stop and consider the statistical facts about abortions. For example, 86 percent of all abortions are performed because the unborn child was considered to be an inconvenience. Inconvenience is simply a poor and inexcusable reason to take the life of an innocent child. Moreover, abortions of babies that are conceived in rape represent less than half of one percent, while abortions performed because of incest represent 1/100th of one percent of all abortions. Nationally, almost 900,000 abortions are performed each and every year, so putting the State Legislature in a position where State Senators can no longer debate these issues or consider putting any kind of restrictions whatsoever on abortions is just bad policy and runs counter to common-sense.

Initiative 434, the Protect Women and Children Initiative, is a good fit for Nebraska. While anti-abortion absolutists will continue to complain that Initiative 434 does not prohibit abortions during the first trimester of pregnancy, it would forbid abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy and prevent abortion from becoming a basic right in Nebraska. While the abortion rights activists will continue to complain that Initiative 434 takes away a woman’s and her physician’s decision-making ability in deciding to end a pregnancy, it would allow for a woman and her doctor to make that decision during the first trimester of pregnancy and it would permit State Senators to continue to debate these issues in the Unicameral Legislature in the future. Therefore, Initiative 434 represents the best common-sense solution for Nebraska as well as the best measure to vote for on this year’s ballot. I sincerely hope you will consider voting for Initiative 434 and against Initiative 439.