10-04-2025
Texas House preparing for long budget session
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — On Wednesday morning, Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, called for a motion to vacate Texas Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows from his seat.
'He has chosen to take this body in a hard left direction, where we are growing government, we are increasing spending — and yes that will increase taxes,' Harrison said.
While his effort fell short by a final 141-2 margin (only Rep. David Lowe, R-Tarrant County, joined in support), the motion could be a preview of a long night for the Texas House on Thursday, as they discuss the 2026-27 budget.
As it stands, Senate Bill 1 (the budget bill) is 1,015 pages and could easily grow throughout Thursday. As of Wednesday afternoon, 393 amendments to the bill were pre-filed, and many more could be proposed throughout the proceedings.
'The members will be spending a lot of these amendments and debating the merits of it through the day,' Rahul Sreenivasan, Director of Government Performance and Fiscal Policy with Texas 2036, said. 'Members are prepared for a long day, historically, they've gone late into the night.'
The appropriations bill (and supplemental appropriations bill) fund virtually the entire Texas government, giving all lawmakers a vested interest in how the money is divided.
'The biggest things to me (in this budget) are the money that is contemplated for water infrastructure funding. You have a lot of money. You have additional money being contemplated to invest in university research funding,' Sreenivasan said. 'There's more money contemplated for flood mitigation funding. There's more money contemplated for wildfire response, and that's also in the supplemental bill.'
In previous years, a tight budget could make the budget contentious. However, Sreenivasan said the state's nearly $24 billion surplus could ease lawmakers' minds.
'In years where you had tighter revenue cycles, the discussion was more around cuts, whereas this time, you have more revenue available to meet a lot of the state's needs, so you don't have as many legislators worried about key priorities being cut deeply,' he said.
On Wednesday morning, the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus met in front of the now-shuttered Pease Elementary School to discuss their displeasure for the budget and the $1 billion earmarked towards starting an education savings account (ESA) program. ESAs would allow parents to use state funds to help pay for private school education.
'I'm here along with my colleagues who call on every Democrat and every Republican to vote against the house appropriations bill, because it is a continued assault on public education in Texas,' State Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, said. 'It contains $1 billion for a voucher scheme when the Republican Legislative Budget Board admits 80% of it will go to pay for wealthy people whose kids are already in private school. We can't continue to defund public education in a state that is already 47th in the nation in funding for our public schools.'
Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, said she knows there are Republican representatives who oppose ESAs but said they might not vote with their hearts.
'Ultimately, the governor (Greg Abbott) has put a lot of money into primary races against Republicans who voted with Democrats last session, in support of our neighborhood schools and against taxpayer funded vouchers,' Hinojosa said. 'There's a lot of fear about that.'
Hinajosa — who has a proposed amendment to stop any programs enacted by the 89th Legislature if they make the Teacher Retirement System actuarily unsound — said that regardless of the outcome tomorrow, she's going to fight to the end against ESAs.
'This is a major battle in the war to save our neighborhood schools,' she said. 'To say it's the last stand is not something I'm comfortable with, because I don't ever give up.'
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