Domina disagreed with Sasse's overall assessment of same-sex marriage. "I am aware of no data to suggest that on a consistent basis that children have a better outcome with a single mother and father living together than children with two fathers or two mothers," he said. He said that the government should address these issues only insofar as they affect taxes. It should stay out of private matters, Domina said.
Domina disagreed, saying it's the responsibility of government to define marriage. He said he's not aware of any studies showing children fare better with a mother and father than with two fathers or single parents.
Domina disagreed, saying the feds need to address the situation where the drug is legal in Colorado but not in neighboring states, while federal law bans the transport of illegal drugs.
Domina said the federal government has a "pretty dynamic interest" in making sure all students have common levels of understanding, noting that he may differ on education from Sasse, who attended private colleges and homeschools his children "which I applaud him for." The problem is, both George W. Bush and Obama didn't trust teachers to decide who should pass, Domina said.
Sasse decried the Obama administration's "war on industries like coal": "The Obama administration doesn't have an all of the above strategy--they have a Solyndra Strategy," Sasse said, referring to a California solar company that went bankrupt despite $529 million in government subsidies.
Domina represents Nebraska landowners fighting the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline that would cross the state; Sasse supports the pipeline and the development of more North American oil and natural gas. Sasse also supports renewable energy, ethanol, clean nuclear power and wind energy "but not an administration that tries to pick winners and losers."
Sasse said he doesn't like the level of influence that lobbyists hold in Washington with both parties. "Many Republicans are complicit in that," he said. The candidates will face off in the Nov. 4 general election
Sasse said Americans need "stone-colored realism about the dangers we face" and its government must have the technology to keep up with bad guys, but agreed with Domina on the need to guard against unreasonable search and seizure.
The resumes of Sasse (R, NE) and Cotton (D, AR) do not exactly fit the profile of populists. That is especially true for the lines dedicated to the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Company, firms that advise corporations on strategy, efficiency and ways to increase profitability.
In Sasse's case, he has used ties to McKinsey to burnish his private sector credentials, but in the process, he has stretched the point. He says on his campaign website that he "joined McKinsey & Company, advising leaders in times of crisis." He was actually a "special adviser" to the firm, on an hourly contract--never an employee.
The candidates were asked how they would work with Democrats to reduce the deficit. Sasse, a former top health and human services aide under President George W. Bush, said both Democrats and Republicans in Washington have to understand that much of the nation's debt is the result of the growth in entitlements. However, Sasse did not say what entitlements he would cut or how he would go about changing Social Security and Medicare. "We're guilty of generational theft," said Sasse, president of Midland University in Fremont.
Osborn also indicated that he would support entitlement changes, but he did not give any specifics.
Sasse's campaign website explains: "It's time to cure the ineffectiveness and dysfunction of both parties in Washington, and leave the lobbyists and influence peddlers back east. Congress has forgotten conservative values, like how to live within a budget. They need a reminder. That's the point of our first film: we must choose the strongest, most conservative Nebraska voice to send to Washington this November."
Sasse may be an outsider, when compared to lawmakers who have served years in D.C. But he's worked in Washington as well, working as an Assistant Secretary of HHS & as a chief of staff in the Justice Department.
In his tour of western Nebraska he came to realize that people really care about the work ethic. "The most commonly talked about subject isn't really a political issue, it's the work ethic. People realize that the greatness of America is about our identity as a people prior to government," Sasse said.
President Obama, Sasse said, looks at the country's problems through lenses that tell him the only way for a fix is through government. He acknowledged that Americans need the federal government for such services as the military, to protect the country from enemies foreign and domestic and to create the framework for liberty. "But we in our communities are responsible to build our future," he said.
He believes the saddest moment in recent politics is when President Obama gave his "You didn't build that" speech. "You don't go to places like Beatrice and say you didn't build that," he said. Nebraskans have built schools, farms and more in their communities, and not because of a federal mandate, he said.
ObamaCare would not have happened had the Republican Party been a conservative party of ideas four or five years ago, admitting people were in pain. In 2008, there were 81 million people who passed through a period of being uninsured during 2008.
He noted that when his grandparents were having kids, the average length of someone staying in the same job was 20 years. Now it's 3.8 years, he said. "The No. 1 reason for growing uninsurance in America is not poverty" but because of job change, he said.
He believes one solution will be making health insurance portable, so it can go with you when you change jobs. Sasse said those problems can be fixed without the federal government.
Armey, who recently left the chairmanship of Freedom Works after an internal struggle, said: "We don't need career politicians running because this is just the next rung on the ladder for them."
Sasse previously pocketed endorsements from two conservative national organizations, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth. All three political action groups espouse conservative principles closely tied to the views of tea party advocates.
"The only sector that even compares with higher ed for being broken is health care. Think about how similar they are. They're both dominated by third-party payment, and that third party is mostly public funders that don't know how to hold anybody accountable for outcomes. The institutions exist primarily for the good of their own workers, not their own customers--students or patients. Quality is hard to measure, but to the degree you can measure, you have to measure things that are team outcomes, not solo, virtuoso outcomes," he says.
"The greatness of America is the greatness of the American people," he continues, "not the greatness of centralized bureaucracies in Washington, D.C. Why is Washington, D.C., a boomtown when the rest of the country has economic despair? Why are housing prices going up in D.C. when everywhere else in the world they've had a horrible five years? The federal government ain't feeling the pain. They just keep on growing."
Sasse has also worked to "reinvent freshman year" to help students make the transition from high school--where they "have to get permission to pee"--to college.
"We decided not to waste a crisis," he said, quoting Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of staff and now mayor of Chicago, recently dubbed "Chicago Bull" by Time magazine. Yes, that Rahm.
Sasse may be a self-described right-wing conservative--pro-guns and pro-life--but he isn't afraid to credit Emanuel with being "incredibly effective" at things such as reducing crime.
He also admits he's never run for public office before, and so is probably breaking some of the cardinal rules with such comments.
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The above quotations are from 2014 Nebraska Senate debates.
Click here for other excerpts from 2014 Nebraska Senate debates. Click here for other excerpts by Ben Sasse. Click here for a profile of Ben Sasse.
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