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President Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget is a recipe for disaster

More than a month after federal law requires, President Biden finally submitted his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 to Congress. The $7.3 trillion price tag alone is reason enough to throw this budget in the trash where the rest of President Biden’s trillion-dollar spending packages should have also gone. Unfortunately, Democrats approved President Biden’s reckless spending that fueled the worst inflation crisis in more than 40 years, forced families to dip into their savings to make ends meet, and shell out more money at the gas station and the grocery store to buy basic ...

Summing up work on appropriations, education

Last week ended the second legislative funnel. If a bill sent to either chamber has not made it through a committee, it is dead, unless it is an Appropriation bill or a Ways and Means bill. There are still ways to move priority legislation that hasn’t passed the opposite chamber, generally by amending bills with other bills. I suspect we will see some of that this session. So far this session, House Republicans have passed roughly 175 bills and sent them to the Senate for consideration. In comparison, the Senate has passed around 60 bills for consideration in the House. This ...

House bill addresses labeling of meat

Week 10 has ended here at the State House. We have one month left, four weeks. It is hard to believe we are already halfway through March! Next Tuesday, the 19th, will mark the first day of spring, and those of us that depend on farming for our livelihood have begun to watch the calendar and monitor the weather back home more closely as the days become longer and warmer. Agriculture On Tuesday, the House Agriculture Committee passed Senate File 2391 by a vote of 18-5. SF 2391 previously passed the Senate by a 49-0 vote on Feb. 27.. The measure provides accurate protein labeling ...

Holding illegal immigrants accountable

Last month, the country learned the tragic news that 22-year-old Laken Riley — a nursing student from Georgia — was murdered by an illegal immigrant while out on a jog in broad daylight. As a father of four, my heart breaks for the friends and family of Laken who are enduring unimaginable pain right now. As an American, I am outraged that President Biden refuses to secure our border and keep our communities safe. We must enforce our nation’s laws and work overtime to protect our children and our neighbors, because Laken Riley did not deserve to die. In 2022, the illegal ...

Lawmakers tackle economic development, mental health

There is one more week until the second legislative funnel. This means any bill the House has sent to the Senate must pass a committee to remain alive this year. This excludes Appropriation bills and Ways and Means bills. Economic development This week, the House passed Senate File 574, a bill to spur economic growth across Iowa. There are two important pieces of policy in this bill. First, this bill establishes a major economic growth attraction (MEGA) program under IEDA. This program uses tax credits and a sales tax refund to incentivize major projects to come to Iowa to do ...

House looks at stronger history standards for students

We have been moving through bills at a rapid pace. These bills were what we call non-cons which stands for non-controversial. Some of them are very simple bills, but there are some that are very complicated, but both the Republicans and the Democrats agree on the importance of the bill for the State of Iowa so there is very little debate if any. But once we get through the low-hanging fruit, things get a lot tougher. With the non-cons out of the way, we move on to issues that are more controversial. On these bills, the two parties just do not agree. This leads to very contentious ...