Straight Talk from Steve

The 107th Legislative Session has now begun.

I will continue to serve on the Appropriations Committee, and strive to bring common sense to how we spend your money.

This year I will be introducing a total of 12 bills, and today I would like to tell you about a few of them that I consider to be very important for our state.

Ever since I came to Lincoln four years ago to serve as a State Senator my number one priority has been to lower property taxes. Since this time very little has been done to deliver significant and meaningful property tax relief to the citizens of Nebraska, and the problem has only grown worse.

Today Nebraska ranks as the seventh worst state for property taxes, second in the nation for farm and ranch bankruptcies, and worst in the nation for inheritance taxes.

In order to solve our tax problem I introduced two pieces of legislation on the opening day of the 107th Legislative Session. The first piece of legislation is a resolution for a constitutional amendment to be put on the ballot for the year 2022, allowing the voters of Nebraska to amend the State Constitution for the consumption tax.

The second piece of legislation I introduced was a companion bill which explains how to implement the consumption tax.

The consumption tax legislation that I introduced is called the EPIC Consumption Tax Act, where the word EPIC is an acronym which stands for the Elimination of Property, Income, and Corporate taxes. The bill will repeal Nebraska’s income tax, property tax, sales tax, and inheritance tax and replace them all with a consumption tax.

The consumption tax would apply to the purchasing of services and new goods, but used goods would be exempt.

By repealing these four taxes, and replacing them with a consumption tax, Nebraska will become the most attractive state to live in. The consumption tax just might cause Tesla to reconsider moving to Texas!

Another bill that I introduced last week is a bill to put our national motto, “In God We Trust” back into our public schools. Children need to know our national motto. Without this common sense legislation it won’t happen.

School boards, administrators, principals and teachers have all become afraid to talk about our national motto due to numerous lawsuits from atheist groups who want to remove every semblance of God from our schools. This legislation would promote our godly heritage and remove the threat of these petty lawsuits.

The bill is LB 36, and all it requires is that K-12 public schools display a legible poster of our national motto somewhere in the school where students will see it on a daily basis.

When you stop and consider all that our students see, read and learn about today in our public schools, teaching about our national motto becomes one of the most positive things we can do for our students.