LINCOLN — Speaker John Arch of La Vista this week outlined the Nebraska Legislature’s biggest 2025 issue as lawmakers return to Lincoln: the state budget. Arch, who is so far running unopposed to helm Nebraska’s legislative branch for two more years, said the budget would “without a doubt” be state lawmakers’ biggest issue in 2025 when they return for a 90-day session beginning Wednesday at 10 a.m.

That priority comes as the state budget is forecasted to be running more than $432 million short in the next two fiscal years, which begin July 1 and end June 30, 2027. Legislative solutions will likely need to be massaged by the Legislature’s Appropriations and Revenue Committees.If left unchecked, estimates show that the budget hole could grow to $1.13 billion by the middle of 2029, partly because of 2023 legislative decisions to decrease tax rates for top income and corporate earners.

Now, Arch said, lawmakers will see the reality and real numbers of those changes. “We’ll have to have some time to digest,” Arch told the Nebraska Examiner on Monday. “We took some pretty big swings in the last couple of sessions.”

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