The hottest debate going on across Nebraska right now is the debate around school choice. Earlier this year the State Legislature passed LB 753 otherwise known as the “Opportunities Scholarship Act.” The Act allows individual taxpayers and corporations to make contributions to scholarship granting organizations and receive an income tax credit up to 50 percent of their state income tax liability. The scholarship monies raised would then be used to send students to private schools with a cap set at $25 million for the program.

The opponents of school choice have launched a referendum petition drive to repeal the Opportunities Scholarship Act, and they have until August 31 of this year to collect 61,000 valid signatures. While leaders of the movement have claimed that the referendum movement has been entirely citizen-led, we now know that they have spent $300,000 to hire paid circulators to meet their goal of collecting 90,000 signatures before the August 31 deadline.

Most of the money being used to pay these petition circulators is money coming in from out-of-state. According to Accountability and Disclosure Commission reports, the organization called Support Our Schools has raised $1.26 million for the referendum campaign. Of that total, $800,000 came from the National Education Association while 262,000 came from the Nebraska State Education Association otherwise known as Nebraska’s teachers’ union.

By way of contrast, the organization that is opposing the referendum petition drive is called Keep Kids First and their campaign is known as the Decline to Sign campaign. Keep Kids First is asking citizens to sign an oath called the “Pledge for Education Freedom.” The oath has not been registered with the Secretary of State and would have no bearing on the referendum petition drive. Nevertheless, Keep Kids First has raised $504,810 of which $494,710 came from the American Federation for Children, which is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland.

I share these things with you today in order to bring clarity to the debate that is going on across our state. Petition circulators employed by Support Our Schools have not been honest with the public about the nature of their referendum on school choice and the fact that they are using paid circulators. For example, when asked about these things at Firth Fun Days, the circulators there denied that Support Our Schools was using paid circulators and they denied that the petition was a referendum on school choice.

Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn was the sponsor of LB 753. Sen. Linehan told Paul Hammel of the Nebraska Examiner that the public school advocates of the referendum are “scam artists.” Because these circulators misinform the public about who is really getting paid to do the work and the true nature of their petition drive, I believe Sen. Linehan’s assessment of them is completely accurate.

Nebraskans need clarity about school choice. Nebraskans need to know what they are signing. Hiding the fact about who is doing the work is dishonest and skewing what the petition is really about is deceitful.

Nebraska’s tax system is broken and cannot be fixed. Whether it is the Nebraska State income tax, the State sales tax, the property tax, or the inheritance tax, each of these taxes is beyond repair.

The State individual income tax is too complex for the average citizen to understand. In order to show this, consider this instruction from the Nebraska Department of Revenue’s own website:

“Taxpayers whose federal adjusted gross income is larger than the threshold amount determined under section 68 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) will recalculate their tax on taxable income by multiplying the maximum tax rate by ten percent of the excess amount above the section 68 threshold and subtracting from the result the amount of tax from the tax table.”

Sound confusing? This statement was taken from the very first paragraph of the Department of Revenue’s instructions on calculating the individual income tax!

The State sales tax has outlived its effectiveness. Over the years, the Nebraska Legislature has given away too many exemptions. The Legislature has given away billions of dollars in taxable sales in the form of various sales tax exemptions. For example, in Nebraska we exempt such things as gold bullion, feminine hygiene products, and zoo fees. By exempting the sales of so many different kinds of products, the State sales tax has rendered itself ineffective.

Nebraska’s property tax system is overburdensome. A tax good tax system is one that is reliable from year to year without overburdening the people. Each year Nebraska’s property owners get a valuation notice in the mail indicating the new value of their real property. Those notices never seem to go down. Instead, each year property values go up and so do the property taxes. These property taxes go up regardless of the property owners’ ability to pay the tax and that is what makes it unbearable. According the Economic Research Service of the USDA, Nebraska now ranks behind Georgia and Wisconsin as the third highest state in the nation for farm bankruptcies and these bankruptcies are mostly due to high property taxes.

Inheritance taxes constitute double taxation and that is why only six states continue to impose inheritance taxes and Nebraska is one of them. Chief Justice John Marshall once wrote in the 1819 case of McCulloch v. State of Maryland that the power to tax is “the power to destroy,” and that is exactly what the inheritance tax is doing to our state. Anyone with an estate who wishes to pass it on to his or her heirs know that Nebraska is not a good place to die. Nebraska’s inheritance tax is an incentive for people to move to another state before they die and that is what many of them do.

Nebraska’s tax system is broken and cannot be fixed. We have experimented with these tax systems since 1967 and the situation has only grown worse. The solution is to replace the system with one that works and that is the EPIC Option Consumption Tax.

Last week Dannette Smith announced her resignation as director of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) effective August 4, 2023. I was not surprised by the announcement. I am not suggesting that Smith did a poor job as director. Dannette Smith did about as well as any director could have done given the set of circumstances she inherited and the state of affairs of DHHS that she was dealt when she first took over the Department four years ago.

DHHS is Nebraska’s largest state agency. The agency employs approximately 5,000 people and has an annual budget of $6.3 billion, which includes both state and federal dollars. The agency is comprised of five divisions, namely behavioral health, children and family services, developmental disabilities, Medicaid and long-term care, and public health.

When Dannette Smith took over as director in 2019 DHHS was already in a heap of trouble. Let me explain. In 2018 the voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box, and DHHS took two long years to roll out a new plan which was ultimately rejected by the federal government. DHHS also oversees the state’s Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Centers, which were also already in disarray. In August 2019 mismanagement of the facility in Geneva allowed several of the resident girls to trash their living quarters and set off the fire sprinklers. This resulted in the girls having to be moved to a temporary facility in Kearney, DHHS closing the facility in Geneva, and DHHS opening up a new facility in Lincoln. Adding insult to injury was the fact that St. Francis Ministries, an outside non-profit contract company from Kansas City, which had already been hired before Smith arrived to oversee child welfare cases in Omaha, was mismanaging state monies and was about to ask for an emergency bailout.

When Danette Smith took over as director of DHHS in 2019 she had no knowledge of the pandemic which would soon reach Nebraska. Armed with little knowledge of COVID-19, DHHS had to write new statewide directive health measures and work with local health departments to curb the spreading of the disease. As you know, these directive health measures temporarily closed schools, churches, and businesses, mandated mask-wearing for everyone going out in public and quarantines for those contracting the disease, and distributed testing and vaccinations discriminately according to those who were deemed to be most vulnerable to the disease.

I share all of this information with you today in order to help you see the current state of affairs that we have with DHHS. Over the course of the past several years, we have seen directors come and go while problems persist at DHHS.

The new director that Gov. Pillen will appoint will have more to clean up at DHHS besides what has already been mentioned. Nursing homes in rural Nebraska have been struggling to survive and few can afford to stay open much longer, Medicaid recipients can no longer find a doctor or a dentist anywhere in Nebraska who accepts new patients, and DHHS will soon run out of $26 million in ARPA funds that the division of child and family services spent on starting new licensed child care programs.

Whoever the Governor appoints as the new DHHS director, I will wish him or her the best and pray for that person’s success. There is much work that needs to be done at DHHS, and we need a director who possesses the skills, the knowledge, and the experience to fix these many problems. Finally, I thank Danette Smith for her service to our State and wish her well as she moves forward with her career.

If Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus went to school today, their test scores would likely be much lower than when Charles Schulz first started writing about these cartoon characters back in 1952. I say this because the National Assessment of Educational Progress recently released their 2022 test scores and the results are not good. Our students are failing.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered by many to be the gold standard for testing student academic achievement. The scores for America’s 13-year-old students fell to their lowest levels in decades. Math scores were the worst, falling nine points between 2020 and 2023, while reading scores fell four points for the same period.

The pandemic is not to blame. Some blame the pandemic for the sharp decline in these academic test scores, but we know from data released by the National Assessment of Education Progress that these scores were already slipping prior to the pandemic.

Socio-economic factors are also not to blame. Some insist on blaming the slippage in scores on socio-economic factors; however, the data shows that students from all socio-economic backgrounds and performance levels saw their test scores decrease significantly this year.

The elephant in the room that no one seems to want to talk about is the National Education Association and the teachers’ unions. During the pandemic, it was the National Education Association and the teachers’ unions which fought vigorously about reopening schools and letting teachers return to the classroom. Teachers are not to blame. Instead of focusing on the basics, teachers are now being told to teach on non-essential topics.

Refocusing on the fundamentals is why I believe Nebraskans need school choice. Although the State Legislature passed LB 753 this year for school choice, the bill did not go far enough. My bill, LB 177, would have allowed the money to follow the student so that parents could make better decisions about where to send their children to school.

Over the interim period I will be conducting an interim study on school choice. Specifically, I want to explore the best ways to fund school choice. Many of the states around us, such as Iowa, have now passed more complete school choice bills than LB 753. If Iowa can do it, then I believe Nebraska can do it as well. Therefore, one of my goals next year will be to introduce a bill that will give Nebraska’s parents a much better option for school choice.

As we celebrate our nation’s independence this week, let me remind you that liberty and independence are not events that we enjoy just once a year. Because we enjoy our liberty and independence every day, we should remember these things and celebrate them all year long.

Nebraskans are still fuming about their new property valuation notices and I don’t blame them one bit. The deadline for filing an appeal is June 30, and this year we could see the highest number of property valuation protests ever filed in the history of our State. High property taxes are the number one reason why people leave our State.

Nebraska’s property tax system is a failed experiment in taxation. In 1966 the citizens of Nebraska voted to amend the Nebraska State Constitution, creating what is commonly referred to as the three-legged stool. The three legs of Nebraska’s taxation stool are state income taxes, state sales taxes, and property taxes. After 56 years of taxing the citizens in this way, we can now safely conclude that the three-legged stool is a failed experiment in taxation which does not work.

The main reason that the three-legged stool does not work is that two out of the three legs of the stool are confiscatory taxes. Confiscatory means that the government takes your money before you ever have a chance to spend it. The state sales tax is the only leg of the stool which is not considered a confiscatory tax. When the government takes your money before you can spend it, you no longer have control over your money or your taxes.

This year the Legislature passed LB 243, which will allow taxpayers to claim 23 percent of their property tax bill as a refund or credit on their State income taxes. But, even if local units of government were to lower their levies by ten percent, the new valuation of your home or property will most likely result in an increase in your overall tax burden. In other words, LB 243 will result in a decrease in the amount of your increase.

The only way out of this mess is to end the experiment. The solution to Nebraska’s tax problem is the EPIC Option Consumption Tax. The advantage of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax is that it would repeal the state income tax, the state sales tax, the property tax and the inheritance tax and replace all of these taxes with a 7.5 percent consumption tax on services and new goods.

The beauty of the EPIC Option Consumption Tax is that it puts the taxpayer back in control of his or her taxes. It puts the taxpayer back into control because it allows the taxpayer to spend his or her money before the government can collect it. In short, it operates on a pay-as-you-go basis and so it is the only kind of tax which can never over-tax the people.

The EPIC Option Consumption Tax is not too good to be true. Many people ask, “Where does the money come from to run the State?” or, “Would it be revenue neutral?” These are great questions and the answer is that we can be revenue neutral with a consumption tax rate of 7.5 percent. By switching over to a consumption tax, all of the current sales tax exemptions would go away. Over the years, the State Legislature has given away $75 billion in taxable sales in the form of various sales tax exemptions. By eliminating those sales tax exemptions and by taxing services, the EPIC Option Consumption Tax would be revenue neutral at a rate of 7.5 percent and still generate an additional $400 million cushion for the State of Nebraska.

So, where to we go from here? First, let me remind you to file your property valuation protest by June 30. Then, after you file your appeal take some time to visit the website for the EPIC Option Consumption Tax at www.epicoption.org. Finally, sign our two petitions to put the EPIC Option Consumption Tax on the ballot for 2024. The only way we can solve Nebraska’s tax problem is for the taxpayers to speak out and assert themselves, and you can do this by signing our petitions and voting in 2024. Nebraska’s tax system will never change until the voters feel enough pain from the current system to make the change for themselves.

On June 22, 2023 the Regents of the University of Nebraska will vote to approve Rodney Bennett as the new chancellor of Nebraska’s flagship university. Although the Regents are accepting feedback from the public, the procedure is just a formality. The vote will essentially be a rubber-stamp, ceremonial vote because the decision to hire Bennett has already been made.

If you were to ask me what the three highest priorities of the new chancellor should be, I would answer as follows: First, the University of Nebraska needs to reclaim its rightful position as a land-grant university. What that means is that the University of Nebraska system exists first, and foremost, to service the educational needs of the people of Nebraska. The University of Nebraska is supposed to be accountable to the people of Nebraska by supplying them with their basic needs in higher education. Until that goal is reached nothing else really matters.

Second, the University of Nebraska system needs to learn to live within their means. This means that the University’s leaders must resist the temptation to raise tuition on students, manage state dollars well, and refrain from shifting the balance of the University’s budget to financing from outside sources.

Third, the University of Nebraska system needs to reclaim its rightful place as an institute for higher learning. This means that the University of Nebraska system must resist the urge to become an institution for social and political change and stick to the business of educating students. This does not mean that controversial ideas should never be taught; instead, it means that University faculty and staff should never be in the business of pushing students to embrace controversial ideas and failing students who refuse to comply with the professors social or political agenda. A quick glance at the English Department’s webpage is all the evidence needed to show how this has been a major problem at UNL.

Unfortunately, Rodney Bennett has not said anything to suggest that he holds any of these values as a top priority for the University of Nebraska system. For instance, in the interviews that I have read, I have never heard Rodney Bennett recognize the fact that the University of Nebraska is a land-grant University, that the University is accountable to the people of Nebraska, or that the University’s first duty is to service the educational needs of Nebraska’s citizens. Instead, Bennett has stated publicly that one of his top priorities is to reunite the University of Nebraska with the Association of American Universities (AAU).

Membership with the AAU runs counter to servicing the basic educational needs of most Nebraskans. When Nebraska lost its membership with the AAU, it wasn’t because the school was adequately servicing the educational needs of Nebraskans. According to chancellor Harvey Perlman, the University of Nebraska lost its membership with the AAU because they lacked enough professors on tenure track, lacked an adequate number of faculty awards and citations, and didn’t divert enough money into research. While all of these things are good for the making of an elite research university, none of them relate to servicing the basic educational needs of Nebraskans.

Next, Rodney Bennett has no plan for fixing the University of Nebraska’s budget shortfall. University president, Ted Carter, informed the regents last month that the University of Nebraska is facing a $50 million shortfall for the 2023-2024 academic year and another $80 million shortfall for 2024-2025. When asked how he intended to resolve this problem, Bennett told the Lincoln Journal Star newspaper that he “…could not offer a specific recommendation for how to move forward.”

Finally, Rodney Bennett will come to the University of Nebraska as a social change agent, specializing in the indoctrination of students in WOKE ideology. Instead of focusing on the basic educational needs of students, teaching students how to interact with controversial topics with critical thinking, or helping students find their own way through the maze of controversial ideas, Bennet told the Lincoln Journal Star newspaper that as chancellor, he intends to lead the university to “lean into the effort [of diversity and inclusion], and help drive the conversation about what diversity means on a university campus.” Unfortunately, diversity and inclusion on university campuses never means that conservative ideas will be honored, respected, or valued. Nebraska’s motto is “Equality before the Law,” not “Equity before the Law.” Equality means equal opportunity, whereas equity means equal outcomes.

Do you like the new valuation notice you received on your home or property? Most Nebraskans I know from Omaha to Scottsbluff are outraged over their new valuation notice, and my phone has been ringing off the hook ever since these notices went out over a week ago. The only ones who stand to benefit from these notices are those who plan to sell and move to another state with a better tax system than ours.

No matter where you look across Nebraska, property values went way up this year. They even went up at the University of Nebraska. For example, the Farmhouse Fraternity at UNL saw the valuation on their fraternity house increase from $250,000 in 2022 to $7.24 million this year and the Alpha Xi Delta Sorority saw the valuation of their sorority house increase from $246,400 to $1.56 million! All of this raises the question: “Who in the State of Nebraska will be able to pay their property taxes next year?”

What these new valuation notices prove is that our tax system is broken and it cannot be fixed. Fixing our broken tax system is like trying to put a bandage on an amputation. Nebraska needs a tourniquet, not a Band Aid! So far, all that the Legislature has managed to do within the last 30 years is to very gently slow the bleeding. The Legislature has not been able to stop the bleeding and this year the assessors hit a major artery.

The tax relief measures passed by the Legislature won’t be nearly enough to reduce most Nebraskan’s overall tax burden. For example, the Refundable Income Tax Credit will allow the average homeowner of a $250,000 home to claim a credit of about $1,000 on their income taxes. But, when the valuation of their property increases by 534 percent, as it did on the Alpha Xi Delta sorority house, the property owner’s overall tax burden goes up, not down. In short, these tax relief measures will amount to a decrease in the amount of your increase.

Nebraskans cannot look to the federal government for any kind of tax relief. Former President Ronald Reagan once famously said that “…the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.’” In an effort to increase revenues for the federal government, the Biden Administration is now considering ways to tax the unrealized gains of investments. This means that if the value of your stock portfolio increases by ten percent, that ten percent would then be subject to a federal tax even though you never sold any stock. That kind of a tax would discourage people from investing and such an economic policy would run completely counter to the free-market capitalism which made America great. Nebraska’s current tax system is similar to the Biden Administration’s new tax proposal. The only difference is that one is for income tax while the other is for property tax.

Nebraska needs a new tax system. We need to get rid of the old tax system and replace it with something that works. The solution to our tax problems is the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, which would repeal the property tax, the state income tax, the state sales tax, and the inheritance tax and replace all of these taxes with a 7.5 percent consumption tax on services and new goods.
The value of a consumption tax, like the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, is that it is the only kind of tax which can never over-tax the people. A consumption tax can never over-tax the people because it operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. You simply pay the tax anytime you purchase a service or a new good for consumption. Used goods and business-to-business transactions would never be subject to the tax.

This year I introduced Legislation for the EPIC Option Consumption Tax, but none of these bills ever made it up to the floor for debate or a vote by State Senators. Consequently, we are now appealing to Nebraska’s second House, namely the people. We have started a petition drive to put the EPIC Option Consumption Tax on the ballot in 2024. When we can get the required number of signatures to put our two Constitutional amendments on the ballot, I believe the voters will be angry enough to vote for it. Therefore, I would like to encourage each person to sign our petitions and to visit our website to learn more about the EPIC Option Consumption Tax. That website can be found at www.epicoption.org.

Last Thursday was the final day of the Unicameral Legislature’s 2023 Legislative Session. The final days of the session were hardly void of drama, overrides, and surprises. For example, State Senators voted to override the Governor’s veto to fund the State Auditor’s staff, voted to reconsider the appointment of the Nebraska Public Employees Retirement Systems director, and voted not to confirm a commissioner to the State Racing and Gaming Commission. In addition, three important bills were passed during the final two days of the session, so today I would like to tell you about these three bills.

The first bill was a repeal of the motorcycle helmet law. The repeal of the helmet law was amended into LB 138 and passed on May 31, the day before the Legislative Session ended sine die on June 1. Although this bill is considered controversial, I have received a lot positive comments about passing this piece of legislation. Sen. Mike McDonell of Omaha summed it up best when he advocated for this bill on the floor of the Legislature. Sen. McDonnell said: “Let those who ride, decide.”

The next l bill was LB 50, a bill which was passed on the last day of the Session. LB 50 loosens sentences for convicted felons held in Nebraska’s prison system. So long as an inmate’s rap sheet does not include convictions for any kind for sexual assault, bodily injury, or death, his or her sentence may be reduced by the Good Time law minus an additional twenty percent. The bill was considered controversial not only because it reduces the sentences of convicted felons, but because the bill advanced out of the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 4-2 and that vote was taken after Sen. Susan Geist of Lincoln, a member of the Judiciary Committee, had resigned in order to run for mayor, and her replacement had not yet been named.

I voted against LB 50 because I believe it undermines the purpose of our State’s penal system. The primary purposes of the penal system are to take dangerous criminals off the streets and to punish lawbreakers for the crimes they have committed. Automatically reducing the sentences of convicted felons undermines these two most basic purposes of our penal system and sends a wrong message to jurors and judges that the work they do in establishing sentences is somehow wrong. Moreover, states, such as Colorado, which have passed similar kinds of legislation, have seen spikes in their crime rate.

The last bill was LB 514, a bill for voting with photo Identification. In 2022 the citizens of Nebraska voted successfully to pass Initiative 432. That ballot initiative amended the Nebraska State Constitution, requiring qualified voters to show their photo Identification before casting a ballot at any election and directed the Legislature to prescribe the manner for doing so.

In January I submitted a bill for rolling out Initiative 432, namely LB 230. This bill was intended to enact the will of the citizens who voted for Initiative 432. Unfortunately, the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee chose not to advance that bill out of committee; instead, they advanced LB 514. The Legislature passed that bill on the last day of the session and sent it to the Governor to be signed into law.

When the people voted for Initiative 432, they expected State Senators to draft the kind of legislation that would reflect the will of the people and require registered voters to show a photo ID when they vote at the polls. Therefore, State Senators will analyze this bill over the interim, especially after they receive a formal opinion back on the bill from the State Attorney General. That opinion will be very helpful and instructive for directing State Senators on how to amend the bill during next year’s Legislative Session.

This week we celebrate Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a day set aside as a national holiday for honoring those military personnel who died while serving our country in the U.S. Armed Forces. Memorial Day differs from Veterans Day and Armed Forces Day in that it is a day for honoring our fallen heroes from past wars whereas Veterans Day honors all those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces and Armed Forces Day honors those who are currently serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

How did the holiday originate? According to the website for the United States Library of Congress, “Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War’s end. Records show that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day.” The earliest observance on record came on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina when a group of formerly enslaved Black adults and children held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 fallen Union soldiers. Thereafter the Ladies’ Memorial Association encouraged the decorating of the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers throughout the southern states.

Memorial Day is a distinctly American holiday. Although many individuals and cities have claimed to be the first to observe a formal day for decorating the graves of fallen soldiers, according to the National Cemetery Administration, which is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the holiday formally originated with Mrs. Charles (Mary Ann) Williams of Columbus, Georgia. After her husband, Charles, died she began regularly visiting his grave. Then, inspired by her daughter, she began decorating the graves of both Union and Confederate fallen soldiers. On March 10, 1866 she composed a letter which was reprinted in many southern newspapers urging the southern states to observe the day. Her proposal was well received and the State of Georgia adopted it as a state holiday on April 26, 1866.

The idea soon caught on in the northern states. Later that same year a former general in the Union Army, John A. Logan, mentioned the southern states’ observances in a speech he gave to Union soldiers. Then on March 3, 1868, as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Veterans group of former Union army soldiers, Logan issued General Order Number 11, which ordered all military posts in the northern states to observe May 30, 1868 as a national day of remembrance for the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. The next year 336 cemeteries across the nation held events honoring our nation’s fallen soldiers.

Although General Logan can be credited with establishing May 30th as the original calendar day for the observance of Decoration Day, in 1971 the United States Congress codified the holiday into law as “Memorial Day” and changed the day of the observance to the last Monday in May. It has been speculated that celebrating the holiday at the end of May was chosen because no battles of the Civil War could ever be associated with a day in late May and because late May is when the flowers in the northern states are blooming.

Let’s remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice by dying for their country. Theirs was a sacrifice of love for their country and their fellow man. As Jesus once taught in John 15:13 there is no greater expression of love than when a man dies for his friends. Such is the case with our fallen heroes from our nation’s past wars. While all gave some, some gave all.

The picture above is not real. It was staged by the U.S. Army and was used during WWI to train U.S. doughboys about what would happen if they did not wear their gas mask.

Last week the Senators of the Nebraska State Legislature voted to pass LB 574 together with an amendment to limit abortions to the first trimester of pregnancy. This bill has now been sent to Gov. Pillen to be signed into law. LB 574 has clearly been the most controversial bill of 2023. I voted to pass this bill, and I believe history will show that this was the morally right thing to do.

Whether we are talking about transgender surgeries on minor children or abortions on unborn babies, these are procedures which are morally repugnant and should be banned. History has already shown the world how certain procedures can be so offensive and morbidly repugnant that they should never be performed on a human being. In order to prevent these kinds of procedures from being performed on minor children and unborn babies, legislators had to act now to outlaw these kinds of repulsive procedures with legislation.

Children and unborn babies are put in a position where others have to make medical decisions on their behalf. This means that children and unborn babies represent the most vulnerable citizens in our state. Because they are the most vulnerable citizens of our state, they need the most protections under the law against those who would wish to do them harm.

Unborn babies have no voice in the decision to take their lives and children are unable to make gender-altering decisions for themselves in a responsible way. A child simply does not possess the maturity to make a rational and informed decision about gender-altering procedures. Scientific studies show that the human brain does not fully develop until 25 years of age, yet, despite this fact, LB 574 only restricts adolescents under the age of 19 from making these kinds of gender-altering decisions for themselves.

LB 574 is hardly an extremist bill; instead, the bill represents a reasonable compromise among the Senators of the Unicameral Legislature on both sides of the political aisle. For example, in regards to abortion, the original bill would have set the limit for abortions at six weeks of gestation; LB 574 sets that limit at 12 weeks. The bill also makes allowances for such things as ectopic pregnancies, in vitro fertilization, and medical emergencies where the life of the mother is at stake.

In regards to transgender procedures, similar compromises were also made. For example, the bill states explicitly that gender-altering procedures do not include medical services provided to persons who were born with sexual characteristics which are biologically ambiguous, those with abnormal sex chromosome structures, and those with abnormal sex steroid production.

For these reasons, and more, I am confident that history will show that Senators in the Nebraska State Legislature did the morally right thing last Friday when they passed LB 574. It is hard for me to understand how responsibly mature adults can justify the mutilation of immature children and the murder of innocent unborn babies. These are procedures which are morally repugnant to humanity and which should be banned for anyone who is underage or who has a basic right to life.

I would like to suggest that a memorial be constructed to all of the unborn babies who have been aborted in Nebraska. Because these individuals are innocent persons who never had the opportunity to defend themselves, I believe they should be forever memorialized and never be forgotten.