Fischer Opposed USDA Program to Increase Competition and Expand Meat Processing Capacity
Sen. Fischer opposed the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program designed to increase competition across the economy to help lower costs for American families. The initiative expands meat and poultry processing capacity, which in turn increases competition, supports producer income, and strengthens the food supply chain to lower costs for working families and create jobs and economic opportunities in rural areas. The Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion Program (MPPEP) provides grants to help eligible processors expand their processing capacity, which create new, better and more processing options for meat and poultry producers.
USDA Rural Development designed the MPPEP to encourage competition and sustainable growth in the U.S. meat processing sector, and to help improve supply chain resiliency.
Nebraska has received several awards under MPPEP including:
2024
Borchard Custom Cut and Processing dba Dundy County Processors $1,160,368
Dundy County Processors is a family-owned beef and pork processing business in rural Benkelman, Nebraska. Utilizing MPPEP - Phase 2 funding, they will construct a new facility to double processing capacity, begin operating under federal inspection, and significantly increase their production of value-added products. With this new increased capacity, they will beable to work with an additional 100 local producers. These improvements will also allow Dundy County Processors to access new wholesale and value-added markets.
2023
Greater Omaha Packing Company Inc. $19,982,400
Greater Omaha Packing is a 3rd generation, privately owned company located in Omaha, Nebraska, that procures cattle primarily from independent producers in IA and NE. Greater Omaha Packing processes 2,400 head of cattle daily for customers across the country and to 70 nations worldwide. The company is taking a phased approach to increase slaughter and processing throughput from 2,400 cattle per day to 3,100 head per day, which equates to an additional annual production of 195,000 cattle per year, involving equipment purchases, automation systems, and facility improvements. The expansion will create 275 jobs.
Lot 279 LLC $688,011
Lot 279 LLC has been selling beef products in direct to consumer retail since 2016. In an effort to capitalize on the expanding interest in family farms building their own beef
brands, Lot 279 intends to build a federally inspection portion cutting and further processing facility for use by at least three family-owned cattle producers who are seeking to create their own brands of value added beef products. The company will provide fee based processing and other services; portioning and grinding services, processing and manufacturing of meats for sale to wholesale or retail customers. The facility will help ensure that small and mid sized kill facilities that are operational or being built in the
region will be utilized fully.
Wholestone Farms II LLC $25,000,000
This Rural Development investment will be used to help offset the costs associated with refurbishing an old processing plant. Wholestone Farms II LLC is comprised of a group of hog farmers who will use the facility to process their pigs. The facility investment will increase processing capacity and contribute to a more resilient and diverse U.S. food supply chain.
Nebraska Beef Farmers Suffer While Senator Fischer Rakes in Big Meat Packer Cash
Senator Deb Fischer is badly out of step with American farmers, ranchers and consumers on the issue of Country of Origin Labeling (COOL). In 2015, Congress repealed COOL for beef and pork products. It was a move that crippled American farmers and ranchers and now foreign meat is now being sold without country-of-origin disclosure. Meat packers can now displace U.S. production by sourcing cheaper, foreign beef and yet sell it to unsuspecting American consumers as if it were a domestic-produced product because even foreign meat receives a USDA inspection sticker when it enters the U.S. Sadly, consumers erroneously equate the USDA inspection sticker with a mark of origin.
After COOL was repealed, meat packer profit margins jumped from $146 to $269 per animal but U.S. cattle prices dropped causing hardship in Nebraska and rural America. A poll by Morning Consult found that 86 percent of registered voters supported mandatory country of origin labeling for beef and 77 percent believed it was important that the beef they purchased was born, raised and harvested in the United States.
However, Sen. Fischer has opposed legislation to mandate country-of-origin labeling. On July 27, 2023, she voted against the Country of Origin Labeling Online Act (S. 1421), which passed the Commerce Committee by a bipartisan vote of 16-11. The bill would mandate that country-of-origin labeling be clearly and conspicuously stated in any website description of a product. The legislation is supported by more than 2,000 U.S. companies and bipartisan organizations representing American businesses and workers: https://prosperousamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/210216-COOL-Online-Act-Coalition-ltr.pdf
In addition, Fischer is not a co-sponsor of the American Beef Labeling Act (S. 52) which would require country of origin labels on beef sold in grocery stores. This legislation is the most important step Congress can take in the 2024 Farm Bill to stop the global commoditization of beef, and the global race to the bottom in cattle and beef sourcing.
Since her first election in 2012, Fischer has been grazing on a steady diet of campaign contributions from Cargill Inc., JBS Foods and Tyson Foods – three of the Big Four meat packers that are raking in record profits
Cargill Inc. - $8,500 between 2012-2018
JBS Foods - $8,000 between 2012-2020
Tyson Foods - $17,840 between 2012-2022
Total: $34,340
Source: www.opensecrets.org
Internet Freedom? Not If Senator Fischer has the Last Word
The principle behind net neutrality is quite simple and straightforward. It’s that all internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent transfer speeds regardless of content, website, application, platform, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication and without price discrimination. In our digital world, we can’t have fast lanes and slow lanes when it comes to the ability of people to access something as important as the internet.
This is why both under President Obama and President Biden, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to reclassify broadband as a public utility, such as water and electricity. Because the government deems internet access an essential service, the FCC has promised oversight as if broadband were a public utility. In doing so, the government aims to make providers more accountable for outages, require more robust network security, protect fast speeds, and require greater protections for consumer data.
But the Big Telecomms have consistently fought net neutrality going back to the first FCC vote in 2015. Cox Enterprises, the nation’s third-largest cable company, called the FCC’s action “unnecessary government overreach.” According to www.opensecrets.org, over Sen. Fischer’s entire Senate career, Cox Enterprises has ponied up $59,500 in campaign cash for her elections, making them her ninth-largest donor.
Comcast Corp., America’s second-largest internet provider, has also been generous to Fischer, forking over $42,760 in campaign contributions for her career, placing them 16th on her list of top 20 corporate special interest donors. According to The Verge, Comcast “was caught injecting its own commands into users’ internet traffic, stalling peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent and Gnutella. Comcast wasn’t outright blocking these tools, but it was making them basically unusable.”
In May 2018, the Senate voted on a resolution "Restoring Internet Freedom," that put the net neutrality rules back in place, but Fischer voted against it. She issued a statement where she said “Like most Nebraskans, I support the principles of net neutrality. Broadband internet providers should be transparent and they should not block, slow, or discriminate against internet traffic. It is Congress’ role to work together on a bipartisan solution that will provide protections for all Americans online, and create lasting certainty for the modern internet. Instead, Senator Markey’s resolution was a political distraction from these important objectives, and that’s why I voted against it.” A “political distraction?” The only distraction is Fischer’s acceptance of more than $100,000 from the lobbyists and political action committees of the giant telecommunications firms that want to dominate the internet.
A year earlier, in March 2017, Fischer stuck it to consumers when she voted for a bill to gut the Federal Communications Commission’s internet privacy rules that prevent Internet Service Providers from selling their customer’s personal information without their consent.
Big Banks Say 'Jump,' Senator Fischer Responds, 'How High?'
When it comes to doing the bidding of the big banks, Sen. Deb Fischer’s fealty to Wall Street is complete and obedient. As Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin put it in April 2009 about the finance lobby “they are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”
After the 2008 financial collapse, Congress passed the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank, a law which made changes affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation's financial services industry.
What is critical to understand is that an army of Wall Street firms and their lobbyists in Washington worked around the clock to water down the bill as it made its way through the legislative process. And after it became law, those lobbyists continued to attack the statute’s implementation by weakening its various regulations.
Servants of corporate greed like Fischer hated Dodd-Frank and they set about to repeal as much of it as they could. In March 2018, the Senate debated a bill, backed by President Trump, that bore the wholesome and misleading title Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, that Fischer voted for that used smaller community banks and credit unions to push for regulatory relief for the banks. The bill was a gift to Wall Street wrapped in false claims that it would rescue smaller lenders. At the time, banks had hauled in record profits over the past three years and were among the biggest winners under Trump’s big tax cut law. The policy director at Americans for Financial Reform was quoted in Politico as saying “I don’t see the real-world problem [the bill] is trying to solve, except the problem of bankers’ not making enough money.”
The bill Fischer championed released dozens of banks from tougher oversight by the Federal Reserve including no longer subjecting them to yearly stress tests by the Fed or mandating higher capital requirements meant to ensure that risky banks could survive a lending crisis.
Just a month after that vote to weaken Dodd-Frank, Fischer stuck it consumers when she voted to scrap a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau directive that targeted auto-lending bias. Senate Republicans voted to upend a policy preventing discrimination by freeing car dealers from restrictions on loan markups. The issue is a common practice at auto dealerships – they add markup to the interest rates that lenders charge on loans and pocket it. The CFPB said such markups were routinely higher for minorities and had warned that it might go after lenders for not adhering to fair lending laws. CFPB had sought to eliminate dealer markups over concerns that Black and Latino customers were often charged higher rates than whites with identical credit profiles, citing several analyses – including their own - of vehicle loan data. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) supported repealing the CFPB guidance. In her 2012 and 2018 elections, NADA gave Fischer $10,000 in campaign cash each time.
In October 2017, Fischer voted to overturn a CFPB rule aimed at making it easier for customers to sue banks, handing financial firms another big victory in their battle against regulations imposed in the wake of the financial meltdown. Then-Vice President Pence cast the tie-breaking vote as the measure passed 51Y-50N. The CFPB rule would have limited companies’ ability to impose arbitration agreements on customers in financial contracts, making it easier for aggrieved parties to join together in class-action lawsuits. Democrats and other supporters of the rule argued it would give consumers an important protection against mistreatment by banks. The CFPB rule targeted clauses that are often buried in the fine print of contracts that consumers sign when they get credit cards or open checking accounts. The language bars customers from banding together to file class-action suits, instead requiring them to settle disputes through arbitration. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said “this bill is a giant wet kiss to Wall Street. Bank lobbyists are crawling all over this place, begging Congress to vote and make it easier for them to cheat consumers.”
In return for her loyal support of their legislative agenda, the big banks have been giving Deb Fischer wet kisses in the form of wads of campaign cash. Here is a breakdown of her haul from some of Wall Street’s biggest players:
Bank of America $12,064 (2012-2024)
Citigroup Inc. $1,500 (2016)
Goldman Sachs $26,200 (2018-2024)
JP Morgan Chase & Co. $7,600 (2018-2024)
Morgan Stanley $5,090 (2012-2024)
PNC Financial Services $500 (2018)
US Bankcorp $28,100 (2012-2020)
Wells Fargo $17,462 (2012-2024)
That’s $98,516 from just these eight financial behemoths. (Source: www.opensecrets.org)
Senator Fischer is a Threat to Your 4th Amendment Rights
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.
But Sen. Deb Fischer has problems defending the privacy of each and every American.
Fischer supports the super-secret National Security Agency’s government snooping which allows them to collect virtually all of our phone records without warrants – including incoming and outgoing calls and when the calls were made. The NSA is so powerful that even the Intelligence committees in Congress can’t really control it. Let that sink in. Let’s look at the record:
In April 2024, the Senate debated H.R. 7888 reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 FISA, for two years, until 2026. Sadly, FISA has been used to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. While the bill includes provisions ostensibly to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens, those provisions fail to uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment-protected rights. Furthermore, the FISA Court approves just about any surveillance request that comes its way, and given the track record of intelligence agencies, it is unlikely that they would actually follow these rules. Yet Fischer voted to pass the bill. However 16 of her fellow Republicans voted against it.
Prior to that vote, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), along with Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), filed a bipartisan amendment to the bill that would have required the government to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) before reviewing the contents of Americans’ private communications. Requiring the government to obtain court approval before accessing the content of Americans’ private communications that get swept up in Section 702 surveillance would protect Americans while preserving Section 702 as a foreign intelligence collection tool. The amendment was based on language from Durbin’s bipartisan Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act, a compromise bill that protects Americans from foreign threats and from warrantless government surveillance.
As Durbin explained “Congress’ intention when we passed FISA Section 702 was clear as could be—Section 702 is supposed to be used only for spying on foreigners abroad. Instead, sadly, it has enabled warrantless access to vast databases of Americans’ private phone calls, text messages, and e-mails,” Durbin said. “I’m disappointed that my narrow amendment to protect Americans while preserving Section 702 as a foreign intelligence collection tool was not agreed to. If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution.” But Fischer voted against the Durbin-Cramer amendment.
In May 2020, the Senate debated the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act of 2020. Despite the program’s title, the act permits surveillance of Americans who are not charged with any crime. Fischer voted against an amendment by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to remove internet website browsing information and search history from the scope of authority to access certain business records for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.
In early January 2018, the Senate debated S. 139, the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 which would reauthorize for six years, through 2023, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which governs electronic surveillance of foreign terrorism suspects. The bill would require the development of procedures for searching the NSA database that would protect the Fourth Amendment-guaranteed rights of U.S. citizens, while allowing the FBI to access information with an order from the secret FISA Court, in certain cases. However the FISA Court gives a green light to just about any surveillance request that comes its way, and FISA-approved NSA warrantless surveillance of American citizens has become common knowledge. Fischer voted for the bill.
Nebraska voters should be outraged that Deb Fischer uses the Fourth Amendment for toilet paper.
Senator Fischer Voted Against U.S. Fund for Rural Areas with National Forests
Since 1908, 25% of US Forest Service revenues from timber sales, mineral leases, livestock grazing, recreation fees, and other funding sources are shared with states and counties that have national forests. By the 1990s, Forest Service payments from these sources began to decline, largely because of long-term diminished volume in timber sales. So almost 25 years ago, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 which authorized enhanced payments to help states and counties fund local services otherwise at risk because of this decline in revenue.
From time to time, Congress must vote to reauthorize and fund the law. On October 19, 2017, the Senate voted on an amendment from Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) to establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to the provision of full, permanent, and mandatory funding for the payment in lieu of taxes program (PILOT). The amendment passed with 58 votes (including nine Republicans voting ‘yes’), however Fischer was one of the 41 Republicans who voted ‘no’.
Nebraska has 256,659 acres of national forests including the Nebraska National Forest, Oglala National Grassland and the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest (named for the state’s 19th governor). These federal lands are spread out across portions of: Blaine, Cherry, Dawes, Sioux and Thomas counties, each sparsely populated and with thin tax bases.
For fiscal year 2018 which began a few weeks before the vote on the Udall amendment, Nebraska received just over $139,239 in total PILOT payments for the five counties. Because these federal lands are tax-exempt, these PILOT monies are critical to helping rural counties pay for costs of law enforcement by sheriffs, busing and education expenses by local school districts and other budget line items.
It’s head-scratching why Sen. Fischer would vote against bringing this money back to our rural counties where it is so badly needed.
Senator Fischer Helped ExxonMobil Block Transparency on Payments to Foreign Governments
Senator Deb Fischer is more than happy to do the bidding of the oil and gas lobby. Over her career, the oil and gas industry has poured $529,917 of campaign donations into Fischer’s campaign war chest. ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil companies, has pumped $16,413 into Fischer’s campaigns between 2012-2024 according to www.opensecrets.org.
One issue that ExxonMobil pushed hard on was a February 2017 vote to repeal a regulation requiring disclosures for the payments that energy companies make to foreign governments. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) foreign payments rule was mandated by a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and was meant to reduce corruption in resource-rich countries by detailing the royalties and other payments that oil, natural gas, coal and mineral companies make to governments.
Fischer joined every other Republican in voting to repeal the regulation, which passed on a party line vote of 52Y to 47N. Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, framed the resolution as a vote for corruption.“The rule they’re trying to repeal protects US. citizens and investors from having millions of their dollars vanished into the pockets of corrupt foreign oligarchs,” he said on the floor. “This kind of transparency is essential to combating waste, fraud, corruption and mismanagement.”
The oil industry has made it a priority to lobby against the SEC rule. Exxon Mobil Corp., (whose former CEO, Rex Tiller son, was confirmed the same week as the Senate vote as secretary of State), was one of the most outspoken opponents, owing in part to its business operations in scores of countries around the world. Anti-corruption advocates slammed the move by Congress. “Voting to roll-back basic transparency rules provides zero benefit for the public but will instead allow corrupt elites to continue to stuff their pockets with oil money and steal from their citizens,” Isabel Munilla, senior policy adviser for extractive industries at Oxfam America told The Hill.
Senator Fischer MIA on Cattle Tagging Rule
The overwhelming majority of Nebraska farmers and ranchers are vehemently opposed to the efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to enforce its final rule mandating electronic identification (EID) eartags for cattle and bison. This is nothing more than Big Brother in the barnyard.
- The mandatory EID rule will not improve the disease traceability we already have because it only mandates EID eartags, not an electronic record keeping system. As a result, the errors in transcribing numbers will continue under the final rule.
- The mandatory EID rule will promote more concentration in the cattle industry because the large, vertically integrated cattle feeding and packing operations are allowed to use group identification and are not required to use individual EID tags.
- The mandatory EID rule is just Phase 1 of an extremely costly plan to expand mandatory EID tags. In its April 26, 2024 news release, the USDA stated it “is committed to implementing a modern animal disease traceability system that tracks animals from birth to slaughter…”
- The mandatory EID rule infringes on the freedoms and liberties of U.S. cattle producers by robbing them of choice and by exerting control over their independent businesses.
- The mandatory EID rule is costly for producers with no opportunity to recover the cost in the marketplace.
So where is Sen. Fischer on USDA’s animal ID plan? Missing in action, that’s where. Fischer has not issued any public statements since January 2023 when the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), first issued the proposed rule. Fischer is full of talk about opposing regulatory burdens on farmers and ranchers but yet the Senator is silent on the animal ID rule. Why? Does she support burdening Nebraska cattle producers with mountains of more paperwork to further the interests of the big meat packers who fund her political campaigns? In the context of raising livestock – leave it to the professionals to decide how to manage their herds and keep the bureaucrats out of it.
Bad on Sovereignty, Bad on Trade – Senator Fischer's Troubling TPA Record
During her time in Washington, Sen. Fischer has compiled a dismal record on trade policy. In May and again in June 2015, Fischer voted for legislation to give President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) otherwise known as “fast track”. After the vote, Fischer released the following statement:
“Our nation has an enormous opportunity to open new markets, increase productivity, and create jobs through strong free-trade agreements. Today, the Senate passed bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority legislation ensuring that the United States will have a strong voice at the negotiating table. It also ensures that the unsung heroes of the American dinner table – including Nebraska’s farmers, ranchers, food processors, and their families – will be able to offer their products to the world.”
Has Fischer ever read the US Constitution? Because that document delineates the powers governing trade and tariff policies. Article 1, Section 8 grants Congress the authority to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states." This clause forms the basis of congressional control over trade, empowering it to impose tariffs and shape trade policies. Historically, this authority provided the means to generate revenue and protect emerging industries from foreign competition.
Why did Fischer give up power delegated to the legislative branch to allow the executive branch to shape trade policy? Fast Track, which has only been around since 1974, allowed the president to negotiate international agreements in an expedited manner and with limited congressional oversight. Trade deals then come to Congress for an up or down vote with no amendments. How many Nebraskans know this? The effect of this is that that it places too much power in the executive branch, allowing the president to unilaterally select partner countries for ‘trade’ pacts, decide the agreements' contents, and then negotiate and sign the agreements—all before Congress has a vote on the matter. Normal congressional committee processes are forbidden, meaning that the executive branch is empowered to write lengthy legislation on its own with no review or amendments.
Fischer also voted against two key amendments to the TPA bill. Fischer opposed a bipartisan amendment by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) that would have required that any future trade deals submitted under “fast track” include enforceable currency provisions. The amendment was aimed at currency cheating nations such as China and Korea who manipulate their currency and was needed to protect American workers and businesses
Then Fischer voted against another amendment that would have prevented “fast track” procedures from being used on trade deals that included Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws. This amendment was designed to protect America’s sovereignty and the rule of law. Wonder if local Tea Party groups in Nebraska know about this vote, because they’ll be pretty pissed when they find out that Deb was trying to erode American sovereignty!
Obama wanted TPA renewed so he could push through his Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. But “fast track” for TPP would have made it easier for corporations to send American jobs overseas, and would undermine our wages by forcing Americans to compete with Vietnamese workers making fifty-six cents an hour.
TPP closely resembled the Korean Free Trade Agreement negotiated in 2013 which has increased our trade deficit with South Korea by 50 percent and cost 60,000 U.S. jobs in its first two years. More Kias and Hyundais coming in and less Nebraska beef and soybeans going to Korea.
Fast track and TPP put our health at risk by allowing unregulated food products into our country, such as seafood from Malaysia where contaminants and banned toxic chemicals have been found in seafood or Vietnamese shrimp farmed in unhealthy conditions. Under TPP, which Fischer supported and wanted to vote for, we could not hold these imported foods to U.S. food-safety standards.
Next, Fischer took aim at the Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA). Started by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, TAA is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor and allows workers and companies to apply for training and temporary income assistance for workers who have been laid off due to rising imports or offshoring.
1,547 Nebraskans lost their jobs at 22 companies between May 2015 and December 23, 2020 and were eligible for more than $9.3 million in TAA benefits. Source: Public Citizen. Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Consolidated Petitions Database. Washington, DC
First, Fischer voted against an amendment to the TPA bill restoring funding for the TAA program to approximately $575 million, the level established by the Trade Adjustment Assistance Extension Act of 2011. Then she tried to defund the entire program by voting for an amendment to strike the extension of the TAA program. See, for Deb Fischer, Nebraska workers who lost their jobs because of foreign imports or because their companies moved offshore, are just pieces of trash to be kicked to the curb and forgotten about.
There is a lucrative market for American farm, forest and fishing products worth $1.24 billion in annual sales according to a study by Texas A&M University. It’s Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Nebraska would win big if we allowed Cuba to buy our agricultural products on credit like all our other trading partners instead of cash. Texas A&M found that Nebraska would rank 9th among the 50 states in export value with $40.8 million annually which would help to create 1,164 jobs in the state of the 31,262 new jobs which would be created nationally if we could export to Cuba. Take dairy products. Cuba is a deficit milk producer and currently imports 50,000-100,000 tons of milk powder annually, primarily from New Zealand, South America and Poland. This milk powder and butter could come from Cornhusker State dairy farms.
But you won’t find Fischer’s name as a co-sponsor of the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act which was filed by Sen. Jerry Moran and Sen. Roger Marshall, both Kansas Republicans along with two Senate Democrats. The bill repeals key provisions of existing laws that block Americans from doing business in Cuba, but keeps in place laws that address human rights or property claims against the Cuban government. Nor has Fischer co-sponsored any versions of the Cuba Agricultural Exports Act that have had bipartisan support in both branches of Congress during her two terms. Even the US Chamber of Commerce supports making money by exporting our stuff to Cuba.
Republicans often bring up Cuba’s human rights record as a reason not to do a trade deal. But we do business with China, a nation that has a horrendous record on human rights including persecution of the Uyghurs in the far northwest region of China. This argument fails to hold water.
Fischer Voted Against Rural Broadband in First Six Months as a Senator
Sen. Deb Fischer wasted little time upon her arrival in Washington by voting against rural broadband that folks on the wrong side of the digital divide back home in Nebraska desperately needed.
On August 21, 2012, as Fischer was running her first race for the Senate, the Federal Communications Commission released their Eighth Broadband Progress Report. The agency found that in rural areas of Nebraska, 33% of the population was without access to fixed broadband meeting the speed benchmark of 25Mbps. On tribal lands, the situation was far worse, with 81.1% of the population lacking access.
But in June 2013, as the Senate was debating S.954, the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013, Fischer voted against an amendment to the Senate farm bill proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy. The Leahy amendment sought to establish a pilot program to bring gigabit Internet projects in rural areas. As many as five projects would be undertaken in the first phase. The amendment passed 48Y-38N.
A spokesman for Senator Leahy said the gigabit networks would not require new funding but would be funded through an existing program through USDA’s Rural Utilities Service. The spokesman said the initial plan was to award funding in the form of loans but that the final version of the amendment included grants.
It would be up to the RUS to determine where the gigabit networks would be built and the selection process would be similar to the one used today in awarding RUS grants and loans, the spokesman said.
“Next-generation gigabit networks have the potential to transform rural areas,” said Senator Leahy in an announcement about the amendment. “Rural America has so much to offer, but without the great equalizer of high-speed Internet, rural communities cannot live up to their full potential. Investing in next-generation networks now will help ensure that rural areas do not fall even farther behind.”