The House Budget Bill is on its way to the full House for a vote.
The $164.5 billion dollar budget passed out of the House Appropriations committee on a party line vote this morning. Debate on the bill is set for April 1st (insert your own joke here). That debate could last into the weekend, as about 150 amendments are traditionally filed for the action on the floor.
There is little change from the baseline budget released at the beginning of the session and the bill passed this morning. Public Education is being cut by about $8 billion, Medicaid by about $6 billion.
No matter what the House does, the Texas Senate appears ready to spend billions more on its budget. That includes a push by Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) to add around $6 billion back into the K-12 education budget. We’ll see in coming weeks how those differences get hammered out and whether or not the budget debate lasts beyond the regular legislative session, which ends on May 30th.
