1 week Ago
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas House of Representatives convened for a marathon session on Thursday as House lawmakers took up and debated the state budget. The annual long House floor session, known as "Budget Day," could more accurately be described as "budget night" as, in recent years, it has stretched into the late night and early morning hours. The budget is the only thing state lawmakers are constitutionally required to pass during the 89th Legislative Session.
Last month, the Texas Senate unanimously passed its budget bill, Senate Bill 1, and sent it to the House. The lower chamber has made a few changes to it, and on Thursday, lawmakers began debating it on the House floor. The $337 billion budget determines the funding for different state departments and programs over the next two years.
"I am confident that the amendments that we will consider today and the legislation that this chamber will debate in the coming weeks will produce a final budget that is fiscally conservative and represents the priorities of this state," Rep. Greg Bonnen (R-Friendswood) said. The biggest chunks of the state budget are set aside for health and human services and education.
SB 1 includes funding for items like Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), property tax cuts and Operation Lone Star. The House budget includes $6 billion for property tax relief, $4.3 billion for teacher pay raises and $1 billion for the education savings account program.
The House budget proposal is similar to the budget the Senate passed but higher than the upper chamber's version. Much of that has to do with the proposals from House lawmakers to increase public education funding, specifically by increasing the base amount of funding that schools receive per student. The House has proposed nearly $8 billion in new funding for public schools as part of House Bill 2.
During the floor debate on Thursday, lawmakers said they expect to vote on HB 2 and the ESA bill, SB 2, next week. This is in addition to $63 billion to fund school enrollment, $400 million for school safety upgrades, and $450 million to reduce the cost of health insurance for teachers. Democratic lawmakers argue that isn't enough for local school districts since base funding for districts has not increased since 2019, partly because it was tied to school choice legislation in the 2023 legislative session.
It has put districts in a situation where they are now facing budget deficits, layoffs and school closures. "Why are we continuing to balance our budgets on the backs of poor students and poor families?" Rep. Ron Reynolds said during a press conference on Wednesday.
"This is going to lead to more students dropping out of school and more students having disparities in futures and income." While lawmakers in the two chambers are substantially in agreement about the budget, there are some disagreements on how exactly that money should be spent. Both chambers have budgeted more than $6 billion for new property tax cuts, half of which will help local school districts bring down their tax rates.
However, the two chambers diverge on what to do with the other half. The Senate wants to increase the homestead exemption and lower the amount of a home's value that can be taxed to pay for public schools and combine that with a tax-cut method known as "compression." The House wants to do compression with targeted tax breaks for businesses.
"Both House and Senate introduced bills included 3 billion for additional rate for aggression, and another three and a half billion is contingent on legislation that we'll have an opportunity to discuss is that tax policy comes to the floor," Bonnen said. "What we're doing today does not define or constrict what we do from the tax policy standpoint. This creates some basic parameters for where we are.
" The Senate's version allocates $5 billion to the Texas Energy Fund, while the House budget only allocates $2 billion. The house budget included $449 million for 560 more state troopers and improved service at driver's license stations. There is also $411 million for correctional facilities and $578 million to boost pay for corrections and probation officers.
"This budget redoubles this effort to keep up with the state's growing population," Rep. Mary González (D-Clint) said. "Senate Bill 1 gives DPS the tools they need to keep our community safe.
" The budget includes $240 million for new mental health beds and youth crisis outreach, $263 million for women's health and maternal safety, $117.9 million to help keep foster care kids closer to home with community-based care, and $29.8 million for children and adults with disabilities.
The House budget includes $30 billion for road projects, $2.5 billion for water infrastructure, $750 million to advance nuclear energy in the state through the Texas Energy Fund that would be created by HB 14, $400 million in flood mitigation as part of HB 500 and $100 million for efforts to reduce childcare waitlists. The budget sets aside $10 million for the state to buy the property that Robb Elementary School occupied in Uvalde, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in 2022.
The money would go towards creating a park there to memorialize the victims and their families. "This item is a particularly small item, in a sense, in the dollar amount, but it's huge in what it symbolizes to this community," Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston).
Lawmakers in the House are gearing up for a late night and early morning. As of 6 p.m.
, they still have hundreds of amendments to get through. However, they effectively killed nearly 200 of the 400 pre-filed amendments by moving them to Article 11 before the debate started, which upset some members, including Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian).
"We should be allowed, whether you like these amendments or don't like them, to debate them among the merits as a body," Harrison said. "That's what Texas deserves, and this tyrannical motion effectively silences millions of people." House lawmakers pre-filed more than 400 amendments ranging from moving money around to eliminating programs.
The first amendment was one by Rep. González that stripped a substantial amount of funding from the Texas Lottery Commission and another that killed funding for economic development and tourism in the governor's office - which, in turn, killed Rep. Mitch Little's amendment to give staff in the Office of the Attorney General a 6% raise because that would have rerouted that funding for the pay raise.
Meanwhile, lawmakers rejected amendments that would have increased funding for efforts to expand internet access to rural areas and create a quarterly report on the impact of tariffs on the Texas economy. "If you look right now, West Texas Intermediate oil costs $60 a barrel. The break even point for producing oil is 65 a barrel.
You add tariffs on steel and aluminum. That means folks aren't drilling in West Texas," Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) said.
"That's bad for our economy. We want to see that on a quarterly basis so we can make adjustments." The House rejected an amendment that would have used $5 million from border security to create a dashboard tracking economic distress in the state.
The dashboard would show eviction filings, food insecurity rates, utility disconnection notices, local unemployment claims, SNAP enrollment, and public school lunch debt. "What's happening in Texas is we are creating poverty and we are struggling families and keeping a financial stranglehold on them," Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos (D-Richardson) said.
"You may want to distract from the issue, but my focus is on letting us know where working families need help so we can help them." Republicans pushed back and said this is not the time to remove funding from border security. "Women and children are being trafficked.
They're put in the back of semi-trucks. They're being trafficked into sex slavery. They're dying when they come across the border because there's not water.
Hold on. Fentanyl deaths are at an all-time high," Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) said.
"I just don't think this is the best place for you to pull money." Several Democrats expressed frustration with an amendment House lawmakers adopted to move $70 million from Medicaid to crisis pregnancy centers and other Thriving Texas Families services. "I'm disappointed that you're taking money from indigent Texans to fund something that is smoke and mirrors," Rep.
Maria Luisa Flores (D-Austin) said. Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress) said he doesn't believe any current Medicaid recipients would be affected.
The debate got testy on an amendment proposed by State Rep. John Bucy (D-Austin) that would expand Medicaid in Texas. After the initial budget vote, the House will also take up the supplemental budget, which fills in funding gaps from the current budget.
Once the House passes a budget, members of the two chambers will hash out the differences behind closed doors before sending the final budget bill to the governor..
