Last Thursday was the deadline for Senate committees to vote on legislation that was introduced in this chamber. There were more than 800 bills filed, and more than 400 of them were approved by our various committees and are now available to hear on the floor. The deadline for getting those heard by the full Senate is March 12th, so the next two weeks will be extremely busy at the Capitol.

I have 11 bills that made it through the committee phase. I also had several other pieces of legislation that would have provided much-needed incentives to move rural Oklahoma forward, but because of the dec...