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Election 2014

Dinsdale hopes to stand out from the crowded Senate race field

Sid Dinsdale claims to be different than other Republican candidates running for a Nebraska seat in the U.S. Senate next year.

“My resume is a lot longer and wider and deeper,” Dinsdale said.

He spent 37 years working in community banking and agriculture and is still involved in agriculture, cattle feeding, ethanol and community banking.

“I’m an unconventional person running for the United States Senate,” Dinsdale said. “People say we don’t have any political experience and I take that as an asset, because I have dealt with regulations, purchased and sold businesses and I understand the impact of the overreach of the federal government into our lives.”

A firm believer in term limits, Dinsdale vows to spend only two terms in congress if elected.

“I think 12 years is plenty of time,” Dinsdale said. “It’s supposed to be a citizen legislature, not professional.”

If a congressman is in Washington for a career he will vote differently, not necessarily with the interests of his constituents in mind, he added.

Like many of his peers, Dinsdale still thinks the Affordable Care Act should be repealed.

“The website will get fixed eventually but you can’t fix a lot of the structure of Obamacare itself,” Dinsdale said.

He laments the fact that young people are forced to sign up when they might not want insurance.

“That’s what it was sold on, that everybody wanted access and there was this big cry for access, in my opinion access was never a problem,” Dinsdale said. “Some of us went in the front door and some of us went in the emergency room door but everybody had access.”

He believes the real issue is cost and that costs will go through the roof because of the act. He cannot predict whether or not there will be enough votes to repeal the act in the future, but he thinks there will be tremendous pressure to nix the law.

When it comes to immigration, Dinsdale believes the border should be sealed.

“If Israel can seal the border from people trying to kill them, we can seal our border from people trying to get jobs,” he said.

In Dinsdale’s opinion, the government should find those here illegally and deport all those who have criminal records. Then the government could create a worker status for those who’d like to stay, with stipulations for remaining in the country such as learning English and U.S. history.

But his determination to change or adapt legislation does not end there.

“We have to have entitlement reform,” Dinsdale said. “The bigger issue is our fiscal problems but entitlement reform is the biggest part of that. How we do it is up for debate and argument but I think Washington D.C. underestimates Americans. We understand we have to have some entitlement reform and everything’s on the table.”

The U.S. takes in $200 billion in tax revenue per month, according to Dinsdale. He believes this is plenty of money for the government to run on and that the defense department needs to be the number one priority.

“All departments know they need to get along with less money,” Dinsdale said. “And then maybe some departments will have to go away.”

He acknowledges that there must be a safety net for those who truly need it, especially the elderly, and thinks small changes over time would move entitlements toward sound financial footing. Military spending will have to be cut as well.

“They’re already having tremendous cuts in an embarrassing way, the sequester,” Dinsdale said.

Making 10 percent cuts across the board is not a smart way to cut from the military, he added.

“Yes, the defense department is ready, willing and able to adjust to a smaller budget and still be the best military in the world,” Dinsdale said. “That would be my highest priority on the budget is make sure that defense is adequately funded.”

The overreach of federal government is the biggest concern for many Nebraskans, Dinsdale claimed.

“I understand what poor regulation can do to inhibit business growth and interfere in our personal lives,” Dinsdale said.

EPA regulations are a concern for people in the panhandle especially those involved with agriculture, Dinsdale believes.

“They’re trying to widen their authority to more waterways,” Dinsdale said. “There’s no debate, there’s no discussion—they come up with regulation that forces farmers, ranchers, cattle feeders to do things that are very expensive and in my opinion that are often unnecessary,” Dinsdale said.

Other examples of overreach, Dinsdale insists, are national education standards which are interfering with what local school boards would like to teach. He also disagrees with national standards to provide healthier food to schoolchildren. He believes communities should be able to decide what their children eat at school.

Dinsdale took the Grover Norquist pledge for no net new taxes, which means he would not vote for an increase in the overall amount of taxes the federal government could collect. If one tax needs to be raised, another should be lowered.

“The government gets enough net tax revenue,” Dinsdale said. “The debate, the argument can be about where it comes from.”

Dinsdale grew up in Palmer, a town of 400 near Grand Island but has spent much of his career in Omaha.

“I’m kind of a hybrid guy on my background,” Dinsdale said. “I’m still probably more comfortable in the tavern in Sidney than I am in the Omaha chamber of commerce but I can do both.”

 

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