Legislative session crashes with lawmakers unable to set a budget because of Republican infighting
Mississippi Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and other Senate leaders on Saturday excoriated the Republican House leadership, after the House didn't show up for what was supposed to be 'conference weekend' to haggle out a $7 billion budget.
'There is no reasonable explanation for this,' Hosemann said. '… A special session will be very expensive. We just cut taxes, but now we're going to go spend tens of thousands of dollars so (the House) can have the weekend off. I hope they enjoy their weekend off. If anyone sees any of their House members this weekend, they need to ask them, why didn't you do your job? Where were you?
'It's embarrassing,' Hosemann said. 'We all took the same oath … We adopted the rules. We all agreed to be here … If we can't set a budget, that means, for Child Protective Services, we have little girls tonight having to stay in hotel rooms. Teachers can't sign their contracts for their jobs … Highway patrolmen are out there not knowing how much they'll get paid … This is chaotic, and it's senseless.'
The roughly 100 bills that make up the state's annual budget died with Friday and Saturday night deadlines.
To revive the budget bills and end this year's legislative session roughly on time, the House and Senate would have to agree to a parliamentary extension of deadlines and the session, or Gov. Tate Reeves would have to force them into special session sometime before the new budget year starts July 1. Numerous senators, on both sides of the aisle, on Saturday vowed they wouldn't vote for extending the session.
'There really isn't any other option (than the governor calling a special session),' Hosemann said. 'You heard what the senators were saying.'
Besides costing taxpayers easily $100,000 a day to pay, feed and house lawmakers, staff the Capitol and legislative services offices and other expenses, a special session also gives the constitutionally weak governor a little more control over legislation, in that he can control what items are on the agenda.
Lawmakers had expected to end this year's three-month session by the middle of next week, with setting a budget being one of the final chores.
Although they're all Republicans, House and Senate leaders — including Hosemann and Speaker Jason White — have politically clashed for the last two years and had trouble agreeing on major issues. Recently, they passed a tax overhaul bill to the governor that would eliminate the state income tax, long a goal of White and House leaders.
But Senate leaders have cried foul over the manner in which it was passed into law. The House seized on typos in the Senate bill that made it more like the House position, and Gov. Reeves signed it into law.
With the tax battle going on for most of this session and causing ill will, the House and Senate have killed much of each other's other major initiatives and bills.
The House on Friday had announced it was leaving for the weekend and would return Monday.
For the last two years, White has said he wants lawmakers to start negotiating on the budget earlier in the legislative session and try to avoid crunching numbers on the Saturday night deadline, referred to as 'conference weekend,' which happens late in the session.
For years, rank-and-file lawmakers have complained that they often don't have time to read the lengthy budget bills because of the rushed nature of Saturday night budget negotiations, which has also caused lawmakers and staff attorneys in previous years to make mistakes in legislation.
Last session, lawmakers ironed out most of the budget during conference weekend, but White said he told Hosemann that would not be the case this year.
'We're just not going to be up here in the middle of the night doing a hurried budget,' White said. 'We're through doing that from here and all years forward.'
White told reporters that House leaders had signed off on their proposed budget bills and sent them to the Senate before a Friday night deadline. But Hosemann and other Senate leaders on Saturday said that never happened. They said not only did House leaders not send budget bills over, they ghosted Senate budget negotiators most of last week, preventing early agreements being reached. And, Senate leaders said, the House closed its daily journal and docket rooms early at least a couple of days, meaning the Senate couldn't deliver and file bills.
Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, on Saturday said he suspects discord over the tax overhaul, and the Senate refusing to agree with the House on legalizing online gambling played into the current budget stalemate. But he said he gets along with his House counterparts and the problems are more at the leadership level.
'As much as I respect the speaker, I don't understand this,' Wiggins said. '… Really, what this is doing is holding hostage agencies and the running of state government because of some issues they have … People send us here to get our business done in the 90 days we have. I just want to keep us from becoming like Washington, D.C., because D.C. is not exactly the bastion of efficiency.'
Such a standoff, and potential special session, has loomed over much of the 2025 session, when it appeared the House and Senate would remain at loggerheads over the tax overhaul, until the Senate accidentally agreed with the House with the typos in what it passed.
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