Reaction Varies to Passage of One Big Beautiful Bill

Gov. Pillen Praises Passage of One Big Beautiful Bill

 LINCOLN, NE – Governor Jim Pillen released the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass the ‘One, Big, Beautiful’ reconciliation bill.

“The vast majority of Nebraskans support President Trump’s vision for his America First Agenda. This legislation is foundational to extending tax cuts for families, boosting our military, securing our borders, and growing agriculture. Despite attempts by Democrats to run the clock on this bill, Republicans – especially Nebraska’s Congressional delegation – deserve a lot of credit for working day and night to deliver policy that puts our state and country on a trajectory of great growth.”

Adrian Smith Reaction
Smith: One Big Beautiful Bill a Game Changer for Americans
July 3, 2025 Washington, DC — Today Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) issued the following statement after the House passed the Senate amendment to H.R. 1, sending the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to President Trump's desk for signing into law.

"Getting our work done on this legislation is a game changer for American workers, families, and our nation's long-term fiscal outlook. It not only prevents severe tax hikes and expands tax relief for family farms, small businesses, and middle-class Americans, it strengthens essential Farm Bill programs. It also ensures public assistance programs remain sustainable for the neediest Americans and empowers the Trump administration to keep our communities safe.  

"I championed provisions in the package which will empower parents with educational choice, support biofuels producers and energy affordability, and boost growth for capital-intensive industries such as manufacturing. After years of work in the Ways and Means Committee and months of intense debate across both the House and the Senate, this bill will catalyze President Trump's plan to energize our economy and get our country back on track." 

Nebraska Appleseed Reaction
RELEASE: Nebraska’s Members of Congress vote to slash health care and food access to separate families 

LINCOLN, NE – Today, the House finalized passage of the budget reconciliation bill that will devastate our communities, stripping health care and food support away from tens of thousands of Nebraskans and their families. The bill now moves to President Trump’s desk for approval and is expected to be signed into law. 

This bill contains over $1 trillion in cuts to programs that keep communities healthy and strong. It drastically increases overall spending by prioritizing tax breaks that benefit billionaires, as well as historically unprecedented funding for sweeping and unproductive deportations of everyday working people that will separate families and devastate communities. 

All five members of Nebraska’s delegation voted to advance the President’s destructive agenda and fail the people of this state and the country. This bill will:

Increase Harmful Immigration Enforcement by:
Providing unprecedented funding totalling approximately $126 billion for family detention and jailing on an unimaginable scale, and for sweeping and unproductive enforcement of long-outdated immigration laws – separating local neighbors and families, and destabilizing whole communities. 

Dismantle SNAP by:
Shifting huge, unmanageable costs to states to cover SNAP, risking loss of benefits or eligibility for the 150,000 Nebraskans currently utilizing the program.

Implementing additional overly restrictive SNAP work requirements on older Nebraskans up to age 64, parents of young children, former foster youth, people experiencing homelessness and veterans who are already struggling to keep food on the table and were previously exempt from these red-tape reporting barriers.

Take Away Health Care from Nebraskans by: 
Slashing Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, resulting in nearly 17 million people losing health insurance coverage and costs going up for the rest. 

Attacking Nebraska’s voter-approved Medicaid expansion – which provides more than 65,000 Nebraskans with life-saving health care coverage – by imposing unnecessary work requirements that put up to 40,000 Nebraskans at risk of losing their health care. 

Ending Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage for Nebraska children and families who are refugees, asylees, certain victims of domestic violence and trafficking, and people granted humanitarian protection.

Weaken the Child Tax Credit by:
Taking the Child Tax Credit away from U.S. citizen children with parents who are stuck in immigration limbo. 
Increasing the Child Tax Credit for higher income families – while leaving out at least 17 million of our lowest-income children.

Since January, Nebraskans continuously voiced their opposition, sharing what this bill will cost our communities. The fight now moves to the state legislature, and Nebraskans across the state will need to work together to ensure that our state mitigates as much harm as possible caused by this sweeping piece of legislation

Open Sky Reaction
OpenSky Sounds Alarm on Passage of $5 Trillion Congressional Reconciliation Bill

July 3, 2025–Washington, DC

The House of Representatives today voted to give final approval to a massive tax bill which will cut nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid and $186 billion from food assistance (SNAP) to partially fund nearly $5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and add nearly $3 trillion to the national deficit. President Trump is expected to sign the bill into law tomorrow. The bill is a massive wealth transfer from working families to the wealthiest Americans, slashing support for hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans’ basic needs, increasing health care and insurance costs, and hurting rural economies.

As many as 150,000 Nebraskans could lose health insurance coverage as a result of this bill, between the 55,000 Nebraskans who could lose Medicaid coverage and the 100,000+ Nebraskans who rely on Affordable Care Act subsidies to afford private health insurance, which this bill allows to expire at the end of 2025. The bill also removes a bipartisan exemption from work requirements created in 2023 under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, for low-income veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people aging out of foster care.

Curtis Medical Center in Curtis, NE today became the first rural hospital nationally to announce its closure as a result of cuts to Medicaid funds under this bill. The Nebraska Rural Hospital Association said earlier this week that six hospitals in Nebraska are likely to close in the next 2-3 years due to this legislation, including Webster County Hospital in Red Cloud.

“This bill is about choices. Congress has made the choice to prioritize the wants of the wealthiest Americans and increase the nation’s deficit over the basic needs of hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans,” said Dr. Rebecca Firestone, Executive Director of OpenSky Policy Institute. “It is an unprecedented attack on people’s access to the Good Life.”

Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon (R-CD2) voted in favor of the bill after signing a letter to Senate leadership last week along with several Republican colleagues expressing concern regarding caps on Medicaid provider taxes that will significantly impact state budgets and close rural hospitals. Limits on provider taxes were unchanged in the final bill. OpenSky analysis shows that a $50 billion hospital relief fund created in the bill will not be nearly enough to make up for the deep cuts to Medicaid that will be felt in every state.

 “With this bill, Congress has cut into a major artery. The hospital relief fund is them offering a band-aid,” Firestone said.

Nebraska Congressmen Mike Flood (R-CD1) and Adrian Smith (R-CD3) also voted yes on the bill, as did U.S. Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Deb Fischer (R-NE). Senator Fischer voted in favor of an amendment that would have stripped out a harmful provision that creates a federal school voucher-like scheme very similar to the one Nebraskans voted down by 57% in 2024. The amendment failed by one vote. “OpenSky appreciates Senator Fischer’s leadership on the education amendment and looks forward to continuing to work with her to ensure Nebraska’s public schools are well supported,” said Firestone.

OpenSky analysis shows that in Nebraska, the provision reducing allowable Medicaid state provider taxes would cost as much as $350 million per year. When combined with foregone federal funds, it could reduce funding available for Medicaid by $1 billion per year when the bill is fully implemented–which is equivalent to 20 percent of Nebraska’s annual state budget. 

“Nebraska lawmakers struggled to close a $432 million budget hole last year. This bill sets up more gut-wrenching choices for state lawmakers every year, likely forcing enrollment cuts to Medicaid and SNAP and leading to cuts in other state priorities including K-12 and higher education, property tax relief, and public safety,” Firestone said.