Senator Tom Brewer
43rd District
03-29-2018

The “cloture vote” I’ve talked about several times finally happened on the budget this week. On the third attempt to pass it, the vote was 43 yes, and 4 no. The budget advanced to “final reading” which is the last stage of debate before it is sent to the Governor for his signature.

Speaker Sheer showed leadership this week bringing Senators from both sides of the issue together to negotiate a compromise. They put language in an amendment to “clarify” the part of the budget that deals with the Title X Federal funding that Nebraska receives. This allowed us to finally invoke cloture and advance the budget.

The whole argument over the budget boiled down to abortion. Federal Law says Title X funding is supposed to be used to run healthcare clinics for poor people. The federal law also says if any of the money ends up being used for abortion, the State can lose it’s $1.9 million in federal funding. On two different inspections, the State Auditor found that our Title X funding was being co-mingled between healthcare for poor people and with abortion and related activities. We needed language in the budget that put safeguards in place to be sure and separate the funding.

The senators who support abortion all howled in protest saying this was all about closing down abortion clinics. One of the teaching assistants from the University even dropped off a flyer to my office depicting a crime scene photo of a woman who died from a botched motel room abortion in the 1960s. She implied my vote for the budget means I somehow support women dying from this practice. Her ghoulish reasoning reminds me once again of the problems we have with that institution.

I think abortion is murder and we should close abortion clinics, but that’s not the law of the land right now. Regardless, this was never the issue in the first place. This is about stopping the mistake of spending federal money on something federal law prohibits. In so doing, this is about protecting the money the federal government gives us to help provide healthcare to poor people.

In other news, I voted for Sen. Brasch’s “pull motion” to bring LB 1069 to the floor today. This motion “forces” a bill out of a committee. It is rarely used and often fails. It was successful today with 27 yes votes. The bill is about teaching Americanism in our schools. It is updating a 1947 law. What absolutely astonished me was debate that ensued and the vote. Why wasn’t this 49-0? What could possibly be wrong with making sure our school children are taught how exceptional and unique the United States is? We’re all Americans. This isn’t a Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative issue. One of the Senators opposed to the bill said the idea we should teach the evils of Nazism and Communism to our school children was like the McCarthyism of the 1950’s and was “indoctrinating” our children. This bill will continue to be hotly debated as it moves through the process.

LB 947, the Governor’s property tax bill, will be debated on Tuesday, the 3rd of April. This would be a very interesting debate to watch. You can see it on-line here:
http://netnebraska.org/basic-page/television/live-demand

Sen. Smith who sponsored the bill says it has a “very narrow path” to success. This bill will likely need 33 votes to break the filibuster (cloture). It is a very modest proposal that doesn’t do near enough in the way of property tax relief, but I will vote for it. I would rather have part of something than all of nothing.

The voice of the people who live in the rural areas of our State is shrinking. After the next census in 2020, and the re-districting that will follow, it will be silenced even more. I believe the “experiment” with our one-house Unicameral has out-lived its usefulness. It was never intended to disenfranchise those who live in the sparsely populated parts of our State, but that is exactly what has happened. Next week I’ll go into more detail about how our legislature is broken.

Please contact my office with any comments, questions or concerns. Email me at; tbrewer@leg.ne.gov. Mail a letter to; Sen. Tom Brewer, Room #1202, P.O. Box 94604, Lincoln, NE 68509 or call us at (402) 471-2628.