04.11.07
Tomorrow The Sentate Takes Up The Budget - [UPDATED]
The Texas Observer blog has a Senate Budget Primer for us.
The HChron has this story, Senate panel OKs budget with 6.8% spending boost.
Senate budget writers voted Tuesday to spend more on parks, prisons and human services than the House, but didn’t follow its lead in draining teacher incentive pay for an $800 across-the-board educator pay raise.
The $152.2 billion, two-year state budget approved 15-0 by the Senate Finance Committee represents a 6.8 percent increase in state and federal spending compared with current levels.
It includes a big boost for Medicaid services to children to settle a court case, a move it would partly fund with an across-the-board state spending cut on other services of more than half of 1 percent.
Vince at Capitol Annex has a couple of excellent posts to get everyone up to speed on what the Lege has been doing with our money. Especially regarding the recent FREW Medicaid settlement. The settlement came in much lower than expected or, shall we say, than it was budgeted for. And that may cause some problems, or opportunities, depending on one’s point of view. Here are Vince’s two posts on the subject, Medicaid Settlement: $700 Million (& Are We Budgeted Into A Corner?) and 80th Legislature: Senate Finance Committee Approves Budget, But Uses Cuts To Pay For FREW Settlement.
[UPDATE]: Burka has some info on what conservative Senators are planning:
My report was accurate then. It is still accurate now. I stand by the story, every word of it. The budget bill is out of committee, but conservative senators are working actively to round up eleven votes to block the bill from coming to the floor under the 2/3 rule. They think they can get them. This comes directly from one of the senators involved and was confirmed by another Republican senator who is not on Finance but has been privvy to the conversations.
That would be definitely make Thursday in the Senate interesting.
And much, much more from Off The Kuff.
Eye on Williamson » Dewhurst, CHIP & Children said,
April 12, 2007 at 10:47 am
[…] begins the debate in the Senate over the budget - see preview here. In preparation there was a press conference yesterday, with Lt. Gov. Dewhurst and a few Senators. […]