Texas Budget Assignment
Texas lawmakers passed a $251 billion biennial budget in 2019 to support our state government for the next two years. Greg Abbott, astonishingly, did not issue a single line-item veto, making him the first governor since Allan Shivers in 1955 to approve a budget with no changes. This year, legislators submitted a $248 billion budget to the governor, which he signed but with a line-item veto of the entire legislative branch. External website links
Take a look at the Texas Tribune’s overview:
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/27/texas-legislature-budget-approved/Links to an external site.
You are now a state lawmaker on the House Appropriations Body, which is the budget-writing committee led by Representative Greg Bonnen, a neurosurgeon from League City serving his fourth term in the House of Representatives. You represent the district where you live, whatever that is, for this job. What do you believe your people desire in terms of a state budget? Are they more concerned with public education? What about higher education? What about health care? Highways? Crime? Are they more concerned about keeping their taxes low? Without attempting to develop a comprehensive budget, describe what spending priorities are essential to you and why in our usual 2 – 5 page essay. What changes would you advocate for?
Overview
The Texas Legislature’s two-year, about $248 billion state budget is on its way to the governor’s desk after the House adopted it Thursday, capping months of discussions between the two chambers.
Senate Law 1 is “a bill that each and every one of us can be extremely proud of, and it represents the goals for Texans across the state,” said state Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican and the House’s senior budget writer, as he laid out the legislation on the House floor.
The 142-6 vote for SB 1 comes a day after the Senate unanimously adopted the compromise, which state Sen. Jane Nelson, a Flower Mound Republican and head of the Senate Finance Committee, called “compassionate, prudent, and reasonable.”
Once the 2022-23 spending plan lands on Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk, he will have the power to veto individual line items he objects to.
As passed by the Legislature, SB 1 would spend over $116 billion in general revenue and does not tap into the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund, also called the rainy day fund. That $116 billion matches Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s most recent projection at the beginning of the month for state funds available for the next biennium — and it’s an increase of $3 billion from his last estimate.
The approved $248 billion in SB 1 is about a $13.5 billion decrease from the 2020-21 budget cycle, thanks largely, if not all, to federal funding for coronavirus relief.
Questions over who should have a say in how that funding is spent have been a major point of discussion this session as lawmakers have moved through the budget-writing process.
