Pete Ricketts on Agriculture and Rural Communities: Votes Against Protecting Rural Hospitals, Tariff Votes as Nebraska Lost $710 Million in China Sales, and the Rollins Agriculture Department

On June 30, 2025, Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts voted against a motion to strike every provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would make it more likely that rural hospitals being forced to close, convert, or reduce services, and the next day he voted for the law, which passed 50-50 with the Vice President's tie-breaking vote. KFF estimates the law cuts federal Medicaid spending in rural Nebraska by $1.161 billion over 10 years.

Ricketts also voted repeatedly against ending the tariff emergencies, including a 49-49 vote on April 30, 2025 that his vote decided, while China retaliated against U.S. farm goods; North Dakota State University estimated that Nebraska was estimated to have lost $710 million in farm sales to China over the following year. He voted to confirm Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose department cancelled about $1 billion in local food purchases from farms. As Nebraska governor in 2021, his administration shifted about $97 million of the first-round rent aid meant for the state's rural counties, largely to Omaha and Lincoln.

Pete Ricketts's Votes, Confirmations and Statements on Farms, Rural Hospitals and Tariffs

• Ricketts Voted Against Protecting Rural Hospitals From the Medicaid Cuts in June 2025. On June 30, 2025, Pete Ricketts voted no on Senator Ed Markey's motion to strike any provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would raise the likelihood of rural hospitals being forced to close, convert, or reduce services, including emergency care and labor and delivery. It failed 49-51. The same day he voted against motions to protect hospital labor and delivery care (roll call 340) and nursing homes (roll call 338). KFF estimates the law cuts federal Medicaid spending in rural areas nationwide by $137 billion over 10 years, against a $50 billion rural health fund.
• Ricketts Cast a Deciding Vote for the Law That Cuts Rural Medicaid and Tilts Farm Subsidies Toward Southern Crops and Large Farms. On July 1, 2025, Ricketts voted yes on H.R. 1, which passed 50-50 with the Vice President's tie-breaking vote, so it would have failed without his vote. The law raised crop reference prices at a cost the Congressional Budget Office put at $50.5 billion over the next ten fiscal years, money that goes only to farms in programs covering just 27% of US farm acres. The new reference prices for peanuts, rice and seed cotton are disproportionately higher than for the other major crops, and farmdoc daily found Corn and soybeans continue to lag these Southern crops significantly The law also lets large farm businesses multiply their payment limits, a change farmdoc daily says will harm most the younger farmers by pushing up land prices and rents.
• Ricketts Cast a Deciding Vote Against a Budget Measure to Prevent Medicaid Cuts That Could Close Rural Hospitals in April 2025. On April 5, 2025, Ricketts voted no on Senator Tammy Baldwin's amendment to the budget resolution creating a reserve fund relating to preventing a reduction in Medicaid funding that could lead to rural hospital closures. It failed 49-50, so a yes vote from Ricketts alone would have adopted it. Ricketts then voted to adopt the budget resolution, whose instructions produced the 2025 law's Medicaid and SNAP cuts. KFF puts rural Nebraska's 10-year federal Medicaid cut at $1.161 billion, against a first-year rural health fund award of $219 million, $280 per rural resident.
• Ricketts Cast a Deciding Vote Against Ending the Tariff Emergency in April 2025 as China Retaliated Against U.S. Farm Goods. On April 30, 2025, Ricketts voted no on S.J.Res. 49, the resolution to end the national emergency used to impose the global tariffs; it was defeated 49-49, so a yes vote from Ricketts alone would have passed it, and he then voted to table a motion to reconsider. He also voted against ending the Canada tariff emergency on April 2, 2025 (roll call 160) and against three more resolutions in October 2025 to end the Brazil, Canada and global emergencies (roll call 594, 598, 600). In March 2025 China said it will impose additional tariffs of up to 15% on imports of U.S. farm products; North Dakota State University estimated U.S. farm shipments to China from March 2025 to February 2026 were almost $15 billion less than they would have been in the absence of the tariffs. The Supreme Court struck down the emergency tariffs on February 20, 2026, after a year of lost sales.
• Ricketts Voted Against Removing Cuts to Rural Programs and Food Aid From the 2025 Budget Plan. On February 21, 2025, Ricketts voted no on an amendment to strike reconciliation instructions requiring damaging cuts to programs critical to rural Americans and food assistance; it failed 47-53. On April 4, 2025 he voted against striking the Agriculture Committee's cut instructions from the second budget plan (roll call 173). Those instructions led to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's SNAP changes, which shift more of the program's cost to states: the Center for Rural Affairs found that In Nebraska, at least an additional $17 million in administrative costs a year will fall on the state budget from October 1, 2026.
• Ricketts Voted Against a Budget Measure to Keep Tariffs From Raising Grocery Prices in April 2025. On April 4, 2025, Ricketts voted no on an amendment creating a reserve fund relating to preventing Trump's tariffs from increasing the cost of groceries and everyday goods for families. It failed 46-53. The Farm Bureau says the federal aid paid to farmers since then does not fully cover farmers’ losses over the last few years.
• Ricketts Voted to Confirm Brooke Rollins, Whose Agriculture Department Cancelled $1 Billion in Local Food Purchases From Farms. On February 13, 2025, Ricketts voted to confirm Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture, and on June 10, 2025 he voted to confirm Stephen Vaden as her deputy. In March 2025 her department cancelled about $1 billion of funding to the LFPA program and the Local Food for Schools program, which bought food from local farms for food banks and schools, and abruptly cut $500 million in deliveries from a program that supplies food banks. By early 2026, 42 offices starting 2026 with no staff were among the Farm Service Agency's county offices, so farmers waited longer for loans and conservation contracts.
• Ricketts Voted to Confirm the Officials Who Ran the Tariffs, Including the 50 Percent Steel Tariffs. Ricketts voted to confirm Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce on February 18, 2025 (roll call 57) and Jamieson Greer as U.S. Trade Representative on February 26, 2025 (roll call 94). In June 2025 the President doubled steel and aluminum tariffs to 50 percent "After considering current information newly provided by the Secretary" of Commerce, tariffs that remain after the Supreme Court ruling. In March 2025 China imposed levies on $21 billion worth of U.S. agricultural and food products in response to U.S. tariffs.
• As Nebraska Governor, Ricketts's Administration Shifted Rural Rent Aid to Omaha and Lincoln in 2021. As Nebraska governor, Ricketts led an administration that, out of the state's first round of $158 million for the 91 counties outside Omaha and Lincoln, ended up shifting about $97 million, largely to Omaha and Lincoln, the Nebraska Examiner reported. The Examiner found that many needy Nebraskans in those rural areas could not access the aid, or gave up trying.
• Ricketts Voted to Confirm Kristi Noem, Whose Department Raided an Omaha Meatpacking Plant. On January 25, 2025, Ricketts voted to confirm Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. On June 10, 2025, federal authorities detained more than 70 people during a raid on the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant in Omaha. The company's president said the facility's production dropped to about 20% of normal after the raid, a temporary loss of output. For the workers the harm lasted: of those detained, about a dozen were released early and 63 were sent to North Platte for processing, and Stateline reported on September 22, 2025 that one mother was removed to Mexico last week without her two children.
• Ricketts Backed the Tariffs and Refused to Join a Bill Requiring Congress to Approve Them in April 2025. On April 2, 2025, the day the global tariffs were announced, Ricketts said "Reciprocal tariffs will ensure equal treatment for American businesses." On April 9, 2025, asked about the Grassley-Cantwell bill to require congressional approval of new tariffs, he said "I am not considering getting on Sen. Grassley's bill" and "We need to give him the opportunity to carry out that strategy." That year Nebraska farmers faced the loss of its primary soybean buyer, China, and a Nebraska Farmers Union member told Nebraska Public Media in September 2025, "we're $150 upside down an acre".
• Ricketts Said the Tariffs Leveled the Playing Field; Nebraska Lost $710 Million in Farm Sales to China. After the Supreme Court struck down the emergency tariffs, Ricketts disagreed, saying in a Wednesday press call that tariffs "level the playing field." On August 12, 2026, KSNB reported that Ricketts said President Trump's tariffs have leveled the playing field, and at the September 1, 2026 State Fair debate Ricketts defended the widespread tariffs imposed under the Trump administration. North Dakota State University's estimate, published by the Nebraska Farm Bureau, is that Nebraska was estimated to have lost $710 million in farm sales to China from March 2025 to February 2026 compared with what it would have sold without the tariffs.
• Ricketts Said the Rural Fund Keeps Rural Communities Thriving; a Rural Nebraska Clinic Closed Over the Expected Cuts. On December 30, 2025, Ricketts praised Nebraska's first award from the law's rural health fund: "This is how you keep rural communities thriving." Six months earlier, Community Hospital in McCook had announced it would close Curtis Medical Center, and Nebraska Public Media reported that the expected Medicaid cuts appears to have claimed its first victim in Nebraska.

What the Farm, Tariff and Rural Cuts Pete Ricketts Backed Mean for Nebraska

• China sales. Nebraska was estimated to have lost $710 million in farm sales to China from March 2025 to February 2026, according to North Dakota State University's trade monitor, published by the Nebraska Farm Bureau; soybeans were about half of the national loss.
• Farm bankruptcies. The American Farm Bureau Federation's count of Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy filings for 2025 lists Nebraska (17, +29%), a rise Ricketts himself cited: "The Farm Bureau reports Nebraska farm bankruptcies were up 29% last year", he wrote on March 13, 2026.
• Food banks and local farms. The Food Bank of Lincoln said about $125,000 from this program is used to buy local food from Nebraska producers before USDA ended the Local Food Purchase Assistance money (KOLN).
• Rural public media. The rescission Ricketts voted for took nearly $4 million a year from Nebraska Public Media, which carries public safety and emergency alerts across rural Nebraska.

Frequently Asked Questions About Pete Ricketts on Agriculture and rural communities

Last updated: 2026-10-25

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