(Spirit Lake)– Another state lawmaker from the area is weighing in on the upcoming Iowa Legislative session which gets underway next week. Senator Zach Whiting of Spirit Lake outlined several of his priorities, including a call for additional tax reform…
“Either to speed up those triggers in the tax reform bill from a couple years ago or cut the overall effective rates quicker.”
Whiting says welfare reform is also on his list…
“The main one would require able bodied individuals on public assistance to work, volunteer or attend school for atleast 20 hours a week to continue to receive assistance. I really want to urge the House to take up those bills. We have coming up this year probably an eight billion dollar budget. That’s a lot of money. But we have a lot of that, over half of that, goes to education, so that’s a very limited amount that can go to fund welfare programs and public assistance programs. We need to make sure that every dollar goes to somebody that actually needs it and needs it the most, and not to people that don’t. And I think we have a renewed focus in the Senate to make some improvements on that, but more importantly we need the House to pass those bills and get them to the Governor.”
Whiting says he’ll also push a bill that would expand the scope of practice for Physicians Assistants and optometrists…
“I think that helps increase access to healthcare particularly in rural Iowa. The physician assistant bill is a bill that I ran on the floor in the Senate last year. It passed unanimously, went over to the House. Things got changed and they added on another bill and that kind of muddied the water. I think we’re coming together with all those stakeholders to try to find a way to get each of those bills through clean and make sure again as I said that we increase access to quality healthcare for all Iowans.”
Whiting says he’ll also continue to fight for term limits in the upcoming session.
