Nebraska Legislative Session Preview — We’re Broke
The Republicans maintained their 33–16 super majority in the 2024 election cycle. The magic number in the Nebraska legislature is 33 — that’s the number of votes necessary to end a filibuster. The Republicans believe they have the necessary 33 votes but there is speculation that a handful of the newly elected Republican senators may be moderates who will stand up to the most extreme items in the GOP agenda. We shall see.
Last week, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen announced his top priorities for the 2025 legislative session. Once again, Pillen will focus on hot button MAGA Republican social issues and property tax cuts. None of these agenda items will convince young people to stay in Nebraska. Pillen wants to ban transgender athletes from sports teams and locker rooms, ban lab grown meat, and cut property taxes.
Pillen will also attempt to replace Nebraska’s electoral vote law with the winner-take-all scheme backed by Donald Trump. This law was originally passed in 1991 and has angered Republicans ever since. Obama, Biden and Harris all carried Omaha based Nebraska CD02 and picked up one electoral vote in their respective election cycles. The Republicans simply can’t get over it and want to pass a sore loser law.
Pillen’s priorities are largely partisan and not relevant to the problems faced by everyday Nebraskans. Since 2016, fewer than 10 transgender high school students have submitted an application and been approved by a Nebraska School Activities Association to participate in sports. Banning the sales of lab grown meat similarly affects very few Nebraskans.
Senator George Dungan stated that he was surprised at Pillen’s priorities and said they are “really out of touch with the issues that are actually affecting everyday Nebraskans.”
“When I talk to my neighbors and people in my district, they say that they want to keep focusing on things like workforce shortages … access to high-quality health care, supporting our schools — things like that,” Dungan said.
Pillen’s plan to cut property taxes will fail again because the state is broke. The Nebraska governor’s last property tax plan failed to pass through a Republican dominated legislature because it had to be funded by a large and regressive sales tax increase. That was a bridge too far for most of the Republican senators.
The state is broke because Pete Ricketts and Jim Pillen deeply slashed taxes. Ricketts was able to fund a big tax cut for the rich due to the infusion of $1.4 billion into Nebraska’s coffers by the American Rescue Act. Thanks Biden. That money is now long gone.
In 2023, Pillen rammed through a massive $3 billion tax cut package, consisting of income and corporate tax cuts. In typical GOP fashion, the Pillen tax scheme heavily favored the wealthy. According to the Open Sky Institute, the top 20% of Nebraska income earners grabbed 75% of the income tax benefits. The bottom 20% received tax cuts averaging a measly $5. In addition, 83% of the corporate tax cut will be hoovered up by out of state corporations.
The whopping price tag of Pillen’s tax cuts concerned fiscally conservative senators, both past and present at the time of its passage in 2023. Former moderate Republican state senators Curt Friesen and Paul Schumacher had serious doubts as to whether this loss of revenue was sustainable.
These concerns were shared by two prescient Democratic senators during the 2023 session. “We are going down that rabbit hole knowing full well that these additional tax cuts, corporate individual, are not sustainable,” Senator Jane Raybould said. Senator Wendy DeBoer stated: “We are giving an extraordinarily large tax cut to the wealthiest Nebraskans. And we are giving a much smaller tax cut to the middle class.”
Thanks to Pillen’s ill considered tax cuts, the senators will enter Nebraska’s next budget cycle in January facing a staggering $432 million deficit. The recent budget projections also indicated that the shortfall would soar to more than $1.1 billion by the end of fiscal year 2028–29. After he learned the state is broke, Senator Rob Clements, the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, admitted that we can’t afford any new property tax cuts.
The Republicans have controlled the state government lock, stock and barrel since 1999 and they have long run on cutting property taxes. Instead, they blew any chance of cutting property taxes by passing multiple tax cuts for the rich and corporations. We are still waiting for it to trickle down.
The Republicans’ dirty little secret is that Nebraska’s wealthy and corporations are lightly taxed. We also have one of the most generous corporate subsidy programs in the country. The legislature should revisit those programs and consider channeling some of that corporate subsidy funding into property tax relief.
Nebraska’s biggest problems are a labor shortage and a brain drain. Nebraska’s “brain drain” — the net loss of college-educated people through migration to other states — has more than quadrupled in the last decade. We are not going to solve these problems by doubling down on the MAGA Republicans’ culture wars.
Former State Senator Adam Morfeld:
“If we were more focused on things young Nebraskans cared about and less focused on going after LGBTQ people, gutting public education, making reproductive healthcare impossible to obtain, and giving tax breaks to wealthy folks, then maybe we wouldn’t lose so many young people.
If lawmakers want a guide to keeping young people in the state, here you go:
1. Stay out of our bedrooms
2. Invest in public transportation, culture, and entertainment
3. Affordable housing
4. Invest in childcare and healthcare
5. Legalize marijuana
Whew that was tough.”
I would add to the list the repeal of Nebraska’s so-called right to work (for less) law. Corporate “right to work” laws drive down wages. Nebraska is a low wage state and won’t be able to retain workers in the absence of pay increases.
I have nothing good to offer you in light of the results of the 2024 elections. The current legislature was essentially purchased by massive infusions of campaign cash from the Ricketts family. All we can do is to continue to resist. The oligarchs who control our state want you to give up and feel apathetic. Don’t do it. In defeat: defiance.
Sources consulted: