Senate Finance Approves $195.5 Billion Budget
The 15 members of the Senate Finance Committee unanimously voted on Wednesday for a $195.5 billion two-year budget that undoes some of the cuts from the 2011 legislative session.
The budget, which now heads to the full Senate, is 2.9 percent higher than the estimated size of the current two-year budget, which is $189.9 billion after factoring in extra spending lawmakers are expected to approve later this session.
Senate Bill 1 spends $94.1 billion in general revenue, the portion of the budget lawmakers have the most control over. That’s an extra $6.7 billion over ...
Comments (5)
Marci Claypool Perry via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It is never smart to dip into savings ...
Marci Claypool Perry via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Make a habit of it..an you end up with nothing.. to protect you
annie S via Texas Tribune on Facebook
So we should go back and cut the school funding, closing state parks, stop the funding for mental health? Our state has largest revenue of any other state, larger then Russia and some other nations. Yet while we pass budget to provide upkeep of the new NASCAR track as well as subsidies for building it here (though only jobs will be part time and seasonal), we just made agreement with Italy so they can build their own oil refinery in TX, again giving money and no state business taxes.
Read the 2013 State Comptrollers projected budget and look where all our money goes. It's about time some of it actually goes to our state.
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Annie, I suggest you look at the state budget. Of the General Revenue Funds ( the funds that the state has flexibility over), it spends 94.8% on three areas. Health and human Services, Education and Public Safety. It looks like that the money goes towards the State and its people!
Jeff Funkhouser
Marci: It's NOT savings we're 'dipping into' but unspent revenues from last biennium (we underestimated the revenues for the last biennium by almost $7B). The 'savings account' is the Rainy Day fund that had over $3B added to it bringing it to over $10B now. No one seems to be proposing spending any of that at this time unless it's to make up the underfunding of health care costs last budget.
So, after budgeting CUTS of over $5B in public ed last biennium, the state took in 40% MORE than that amount in additional revenue. That directly lked to job cuts and additional unemployment for Texans. Now, the Senate is not even proposing spending all of the anticipated revenue for the new biennium while only adding back $1.2B of the cut public ed funding. Meanwhile the Rainy Day fund is anticipated to grow by an additional few $B.