Federal Utility Bribes

How Government Grows

If you ever talk to a truly fiscal conservative, they will slam the national Republicans for spending way too much. So many Republicans make excuses for the spending. The conflict is clear in Nebraska and everywhere else. The spending is why conservatives give to Club for Growth (https://www.clubforgrowth.org/) candidates and ridicule elected Republican officials when they have low scores on the Club scorecard.

However, the national Republicans deserve the criticism. How much more spending does the Federal Government need to do for us to reach utopia (https://www.usdebtclock.org)?

Upon Congressional legislation, the Federal Government gave 10 million dollars to the Metropolitan Utility District (https://www.mudomaha.com/about-us) known as MUD, and it is turned into a photo opportunity. The Nebraska Examiner covered it (https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/04/14/omahas-mud-gets-10-million-grant-for-gas-main-replacement).

Nebraska US Senator Deb Fischer and Congressman Don Bacon voted for the measure. I wish they had not. This 10 million dollars is nothing but a bribe to accept Federal authority over everything. Supposedly, the 10 million will go to help update gas pipelines, but realistically, it will merely cause MUD to cave to unions demanding more money. MUD will do this because they are a government entity for public utilities.

Also, the amount is mere pennies to the damage the Federal government is doing to Nebraska. MUD was already spending $24 million in gas line repairs this year, 2023, and has been doing so since 2008. Basically, MUD has spent up to 360 million dollars over the last 15 years to update the gas lines. Take this 10 million and divide it by the nearly 238 thousand consumers and it is merely $42 per customer for over one year.

Yet, the Federal government has forced Omaha to separate stormwater from sewer water through an unfunded mandate which is over 2 billion dollars of expense costing the MUD customer about $48 per month or nearly $600 a year or $8,403 per customer for the whole project (https://omahacso.com/).

Considering the fundamentals of the project, you would expect the Nebraska government or the local Natural Resource District (NRD, Papio-Missourri River (https://www.papionrd.org) to accept some responsibility for funding the project but no such funding comes from the state or local NRD and most definitely not the Federal government.

So you can cheer Congressman Bacon and Senator Fischer for giving you $42 but you still have over $8,000 of expenses to deal with.