Senator Pete Ricketts held a town hall on Wednesday afternoon, which was hosted by the Nebraska chapter of Americans for Prosperity at the Wheatfield’s Bakery in Omaha. The event was advertised on Facebook in the days leading up to the event.
The topic of the event was “Bidenomics,” and after half an hour meeting and greeting around two dozen guests, Sen. Ricketts gave a brief talk focusing on inflation, electric vehicle mandates, and the situation on the border.
“We have [around] $34 trillion in debt as a nation,” Ricketts said. “It works out to about $260,000 per household. That’s like every American household having a second mortgage on a house here in Nebraska.”
Unlike his previous job as Governor with a Republican majority in the legislature, Ricketts is now part of a slim minority party in the Senate, a system he described as “very broken.”
“We’re supposed to pass 12 Appropriations bills every year to fund government. It takes about two weeks to pass a bill for the US Senate,” Ricketts said. “So if you do the quick math, two weeks times 12 bills, 24 weeks. Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader of the Senate, only has us in session 29 weeks this year. Why does he do that? Well, he wants to write the bill himself, [and] constrain what we can do to amend that bill, so he gets what he wants.”
Questions on the border, China, and new leadership
There was a ten-minute Q&A afterward. I asked Sen. Ricketts whether a new Majority Leader, specifically Rand Paul, could do anything to stop the endless series of last-minute omnibus packages being dropped on the Senate.
“One of the things that I’m talking to all the candidates about who want to be the next leader, is you have to commit to an Appropriations process where we pass these bills out individually, and we get a chance to offer amendments,” Ricketts said. “I do know that there are Democrats who want to have the ability to offer amendments as well, and it’s not happening.”
“What are we going to do to prevent China from buying up our American land?” asked one guest.
“We do have bills along those lines to prevent China from being able to buy farmland and so forth,” Ricketts said, “We [also] have to look to make sure that we’re not vulnerable to them in things like pharmaceuticals or semiconductor chips … if you look at the critical minerals, 60 to 80% of all the things we need — like, lithium, cobalt, graphite — is either mined in China or processed in China.”
The last question was on illegal immigration. “Can you please address why the Biden administration is facilitating and funding the invasion of our own country with millions of illegal aliens?” she asked.
“We got an insight into it when Yvette Clarke, a Democrat congresswoman from Brooklyn, said on a zoom call, ‘I need more legal immigrants for redistricting purposes,'” Ricketts responded. “If you’re only counting heads, and you have millions of people coming in, and they go to Blue States, what does that mean? Well, Blue States like California, New York, who are losing population to Red States like Florida …that helps them maintain their congressional districts, and therefore their electoral college votes.” Ricketts also cited a bill he co-sponsored with Senator Bill Hagerty from Tennessee to require that the US Census only count citizens.
John Gage, who became Nebraska State Director for Americans for Prosperity in Sept. 2023, introduced Ricketts and told guests that they could buy pies from Wheatfield’s that day for 25% off, in recognition of the pre-inflationary cost of food prior to the Biden administration.
