State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh has vowed to filibuster every bill, even ones that she supports, over the proposed legislation.
It was a mundane, unanimously supported bill on liquor taxation that saw state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh take to the mic on the Nebraska Legislature floor last week. She offered her support, then spent the next three days discussing everything but the bill, including her favorite Girl Scout cookies, Omaha’s best doughnuts and the plot of the animated movie „Madagascar.“
She also spent that time railing against an unrelated bill that would outlaw for those 18 and younger. It was the advancement of that bill out of committee that led Cavanaugh to promise three weeks ago to filibuster every bill that comes before the Legislature this year — even the ones she supports.
„If this Legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it painful — painful for everyone,“ the Omaha married mother of three said. „I will burn the session to the ground over this bill.“
True to her word, Cavanaugh has slowed the business of passing laws to a crawl by introducing amendment after amendment to every bill that makes it to the state Senate floor and taking up all eight debate hours allowed by the rules — even during the week she was suffering from strep throat. Wednesday marks the halfway point of this year’s 90-day session, and not a single bill will have passed thanks to Cavanaugh’s relentless filibustering.
Clerk of the Legislature Brandon Metzler said a delay like this has happened only a couple of times in the past 10 years.
„But what is really uncommon is the lack of bills that have advanced,“ Metzler said. „Usually, we’re a lot further along the line than we’re seeing now.“
In fact, only 26 bills have advanced from the first of three rounds of debate required to pass a bill in Nebraska. There would normally be two to three times that number by mid-March, Metzler said. In the last three weeks since Cavanaugh began her bill blockade, only three bills have advanced.
The Nebraska bill and another that would ban trans people from using bathrooms and locker rooms or playing on sports teams that don’t align with the gender listed on their birth certificates are among roughly 150 that have been introduced in state legislatures this year. have already been enacted this year in some Republican-led states, including and Utah, and Republican governors in and Mississippi are expected to sign similar bans into law.
