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LB 1071, the mainline budget bill advanced to final reading this week with 34 legislators voting in support. The advancement comes after considerable debate and multiple failed cloture motions. 

As OpenSky reported last week, the impasse in the Legislature largely centered around a $3.65 million appropriation included in the Appropriations Committee’s budget and debated on General File. The funds have been earmarked for the Department of Labor to administer a private school scholarship program, including administrative costs for the program. The measure seemed to be tied to another provision, introduced as LB 304 by Senator Wendy DeBoer. The bill would have eliminated a sunset date on the child care assistance eligibility cap of 185% of the federal poverty level and on the transitional child care assistance eligibility cap of 200% of the federal poverty level. Legislators included the fiscal impact of LB 304 in the budget consideration, and many indicated they would only vote for the budget if both provisions were included or both were excluded. With both measures excluded, LB 1071 was advanced. 

The budget will be laid over prior to being scheduled on Final Reading, and will then head to Governor Jim Pillen’s desk for signature. The Governor does have the option to implement line-item vetoes on the budget, which would require 30 votes in the legislature to override. 

The budget bills have not entirely resolved the budget shortfall. The projected deficit is still around $38 million, which will likely rely on a collection of bills designed to generate revenue and the repeal of select sales tax exemptions. 

$50.8 billion

According to recent reporting by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), four of the nation’s largest and most profitable technology companies collectively received $51 billion in tax breaks in 2025 as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Amazon, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Meta (the parent company of Facebook) and Tesla together reported $315 billion in profits last year. Typically they would be subject to a 21% corporate income tax, which would have resulted in $66.2 billion in revenue that would be allocated to priorities like Medicaid, national defense, and education. However, the $50.8 billion in tax breaks facilitated by the OBBBA demonstrate nearly a 77% discount on tax bills for these four entities. 

Several provisions of OBBBA related to corporate tax breaks will impact Nebraska’s tax collections as well. Nebraska is a “rolling conformity” state, which means many changes made to the federal tax code are automatically adopted, saving intervention by the Legislature. In a recent poll commissioned by the Holland Children’s Institute and OpenSky Policy Institute which surveyed 500 Nebraskans from across the state and political spectrum, 79% of respondents indicated that taxation decisions should be made by Nebraska legislators locally instead of in Washington, D.C, showing strong support for local decisionmaking. 

824,000

More than 824,000 acres in central and western Nebraska were burned after four separate wildfires ripped across the state. The blazes are now largely contained, but the economic impact of the loss of so many acres of grazing land for Nebraska cattle producers remains to be seen. In an interview with Farm Policy News, Director of Agriculture Sherry Vinton stated that the amount of grazing land burned would have normally fed ​about 40,000 cows, and she outlined the need for producers to find alternative sources of land for their herds, even in other states. However, after February wildfires burned an additional 283,000 acres in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, pasture land may be scarce. 

Grasslands can regenerate fairly quickly, but that is dependent on rainfall and overall weather patterns. With drought-leaning conditions, regrowth may be slow. As reported by Rural Radio Network, the economic vitality of many rural towns depends on agriculture, and when producers are strained, the impact is felt widely. They cite reduced herd sizes, increased input costs, and delayed production as critical impacts on local sale barns, feed suppliers and equipment dealers. 

The USDA announced several programs this week to offer economic assistance to producers impacted by wildfires.