Ben Sasse: “if I could just begin with a hearty ``amen'' to the great words of my senior Senator, it felt like old home week there…”

“if I could just begin with a hearty ``amen'' to the great words of my senior Senator, it felt like old home week there for a moment, with the quote about the Nebraska sky. My kids--I have one of them with me almost every week in DC. We commute, and I bring somebody with me. Another two of them are almost surely going to be exploring along the Platte River later this afternoon, as happens almost every day. As for the comments about the 1986 campaign between Kay Orr and Helen Boosalis, it was the first time in America that two women had run for Governor of any State. I worked for Kay, the Republican Governor; it was the first campaign I had ever worked on as a 14-year-old. And then, most fundamentally, were her great words about the Homestead Act and the settling of America. I am a fifth generation Nebraskan and descended from homesteaders in the exact counties that the Senator was talking about engaged in Jefferson County. Our State on its 150th anniversary, looks back on a history built by grit from homesteaders, as Senator Fischer mentioned, to a football team at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. Today, we celebrate all of those things that make Nebraska special: hard work, resolve, and love and care for our neighbors. Millions of men and women settled Nebraska when our State was still known as the Great American Desert. The Homestead Act made land ownership accessible to anyone--to widows, to former slaves, to immigrants.…”