(The Texas Tribune) – The Texas House approved a roughly $337 billion two-year spending plan early Friday, putting billions toward teacher pay, border security and property tax cuts, after more than 13 hours of debate that saw hundreds of amendments – from Democrats and hardline conservatives alike – meet their demise.

The House budget largely aligns with a version the Senate passed in March, though lawmakers made several changes on the floor that will have to be ironed out behind closed doors with their Senate counterparts. The biggest amendment of the day, from Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, eliminated funding for the Texas Lottery Commission and for economic development and tourism in the governor’s office, to the tune of more than $1 billion. Both remain funded in the Senate’s latest budget draft.

The House’s proposal, approved on a 118 to 26 vote, would spend around $154 billion in general revenue, Texas’ main source of taxpayer funds used to pay for core services. The bulk of general revenue spending would go toward education, with large buckets of funding also dedicated to health and human services and public safety agencies.

Both chambers’ spending plans leave about $40 billion in general revenue on the table, coming in well under the $195 billion Comptroller Glenn Hegar projected lawmakers will have at their disposal. But the Legislature cannot approach that number unless both chambers agree to bust a constitutional spending limit, a virtual nonstarter at the GOP-controlled Capitol.

Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican who is the House’s lead budget writer, kicked off Thursday’s floor debate by emphasizing the budget’s spending restraint – informed by some 119 hours of public meetings and testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, which he chairs.

“I am confident that the amendments that we will consider today and the legislation that this chamber will debate in the coming weeks will produce a final budget that is fiscally conservative and represents the priorities of this state,” Bonnen said.

The dissenting votes included freshman Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Fort Worth, who said in a floor speech that he opposed the bill because it did not include enough money for property tax relief. Across the aisle, Democratic Reps. John Bryant and Gina Hinojosa voted against the bill over its funding for school vouchers, which Bryant called a ”dagger to the heart of our public school system” in a floor speech.

In all, 19 Republicans and seven Democrats opposed the budget.

House lawmakers filed close to 400 budget amendments, including proposals to zero out the Texas Lottery Commission and shift funding set for a school voucher program toward teacher pay and public schools.

More than 100 of those amendments were effectively killed en masse just before lawmakers began churning through the list, including many of the most contentious proposals. The casualties included efforts to place guardrails on school vouchers and a proposal to zero out funding for a film incentives package prioritized by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Also quashed was an amendment to pay Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton the salary he missed out on while impeached and suspended from office.

Among the amendments that survived the purge was a proposal by Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, to move $70 million of state Medicaid spending to Thriving Texas Families, the rebrand of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program that funds anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. The centers provide services like parenting classes and counseling.

The House approved Oliverson’s amendment, continuing the Legislature’s recent trend of ramping up funding for the program in the wake of the state’s near-total abortion ban. The lower chamber also approved an amendment in 2023 to reroute millions from Medicaid client services to the anti-abortion program.

Democrats, outnumbered 88 to 62 in the House, saw a number of their wish list items shot down throughout the day, and even before debate began. Those included perennial efforts to expand Medicaid and boost public school funding, including by shifting over the entire budget for school vouchers. Also killed were proposals to track the impact of tariffs and federal funding freezes imposed by the Trump administration and an effort to expand access to broadband services in rural areas.

Rep. Jessica González of Dallas notched a rare Democratic win, securing approval, 100 to 42, for an amendment directing the Department of Public Safety to conduct a study of religious leaders in Texas who have been “accused, investigated, charged or convicted of any offense involving the abuse of a child.” The House unanimously passed legislation earlier this week to bar the use of nondisclosure agreements in child sexual abuse cases.

In the end, more than 300 amendments were withdrawn or swept into Article XI, the area where measures are often sent to die if they lack enough floor support.

Another eight were voted down by a majority vote. Just 25 were approved – 18 by Republicans and seven by Democrats.

None of those amendments are guaranteed to stay in the final budget plan, which will be hammered out in private negotiations between a conference committee of members from the House and Senate. After that, each full chamber will have to approve the final version before it can be sent to the governor’s desk – where items can also be struck down by the veto pen.

Public education and school vouchers

The House budget proposal would send $75.6 billion to the Foundation School Program, the main source of state funding for Texas’ K-12 public schools.

Lawmakers, in separate legislation, want to use that bump to increase the base amount of money public schools receive for each student by $395, from $6,160 per pupil to $6,555. That amount, known as the basic allotment, has not changed since 2019.

The Senate similarly approved a spending bump for public schools, but focused its increase on targeted teacher raises based on years of experience and student performance.

Both chambers also have budgeted $1 billion for a voucher program that would let families use taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s private schooling and other educational expenses. That funding survived multiple amendments from House Democrats aimed at redirecting it elsewhere, none of which came up for floor votes.

Unlike in previous sessions, no lawmaker filed an amendment to bar state dollars from being used on school voucher programs. Such amendments, which routinely passed the House with support from Democrats and rural Republicans, served as test votes to gauge the chamber’s support for voucher-like bills. This year, a narrow majority has signed on in support of the chamber’s school voucher bill, a milestone for the historically voucher-resistant House.

Property tax cuts

The budget would shell out another $51 billion – 15% of the state’s total two-year spending plan – to maintain and provide new property tax cuts, a proposal that some budget watchers worry is unsustainable.

Huge budget surpluses in recent years have helped pay for property tax reductions, including the $18 billion package lawmakers approved two years ago. Now, lawmakers are looking to a $24 billion surplus to help cover new cuts and maintain existing ones.

Texans pay among the highest property taxes in the country, which fund public services, especially public schools, in a state without an income tax. The Legislature has tried to tamp down on those costs in recent years by sending billions of dollars to school districts to reduce how much they collect in property taxes.

Several hardline conservative members tried unsuccessfully to amend the House budget to funnel even more money into tax cuts. Their proposals would have drawn $2 billion from a proposed dementia research institute and hundreds of millions of dollars to punish universities that offered courses or degrees in LGBTQ+ studies or diversity, equity and inclusion.

The university amendments, which sought to zero out the state’s funding to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University, sparked heated debate as Democrats expressed incredulity over the idea.

“If the House adopts this amendment, and it becomes law, how many fewer mechanical engineers will we have in this state as a result of UT being defunded?” Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, asked the amendment author, Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur.

Hopper at first responded, “Here’s the thing – how many people are you willing to indoctrinate at our universities?” When pressed for a direct answer, Hopper said, “It’s not relevant, sir.”

Border security

Both chambers’ spending plans dedicate $6.5 billion to border security, raising total state spending on Operation Lone Star to almost $18 billion since Gov. Greg Abbott launched Texas’ border crackdown in 2021.

Most of the funding would go to the governor’s office, which would receive $2.9 billion; the Texas Military Department, which would receive $2.3 billion; and the Department of Public Safety, which would receive $1.2 billion.

Several Democrats filed amendments that sought to reroute some of the border security money for other uses, including child care, housing assistance and installing air conditioning units in state prisons. One amendment, by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, aimed to use the entire border security budget for teacher pay raises. Each amendment was withdrawn or moved to the Article XI graveyard.

The partisan rift over border security spending lit up during a sharp exchange between Rodríguez Ramos and Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, over the Democrat’s doomed amendment to redirect $5 million in border spending toward a dashboard “tracking indicators of household economic distress,” such as eviction filings and unemployment claims.

“We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,” Rodríguez Ramos said, after Tinderholt argued that money should not be drawn from the border budget. “Let us focus on our job, which is to save the lives and make the lives better of working Texans.”

The House also approved a $12 billion supplemental budget early Friday, covering unexpected costs and unpaid bills from the current budget cycle. The bill, approved 122 to 22, would put $2.5 billion toward shoring up Texas’ water crisis by fixing aging infrastructure and expanding water supplies.

It would also spend $924 million to bolster the state’s wildfire and natural disaster response and $1 billion to pay down the unfunded liabilities of state employees’ pension fund. In addition, it would pump another $1.3 billion into the Texas University Fund, a multibillion-dollar endowment created by the Legislature in 2023 for “emerging” research universities around the state.

A second attempt to grant back pay to Paxton while he was suspended from office also failed after lawmakers voted to take up the supplemental budget without considering any amendments. Hopper, the Decatur Republican, had filed an amendment that would have used leftover money from the attorney general’s office budget to pay Paxton.

Nearly all amendments were swept into the part of the supplemental budget that allows them to be considered by the conference committee, all but spelling their demise.

House finalizes budget and supplements early Friday

Representatives approved the state budget and wrapped up consideration of amendments just after 3 a.m. Friday after several points of order stalled discussion and pushed the hearing into night.

Ultimately, 35 amendments were approved, with 53 considered and hundreds placed on suspension or moved to Article XI, where measures are often sent to die if they lack enough floor support. Many of the amendments later in the night were less controversial, including studies on desalination, a name change from the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and a study into child abuse committed by religious leaders.

In final floor discussions, Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Fort Worth, spoke in opposition against the budget as a whole, claiming more of the $24 billion surplus should have been put toward property tax cuts, a concern echoed by Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian. The proposed budget currently provides a total of $51 billion for property tax relief.

“Other than the border, property tax comes up over and over and over again,” Olcott said. “I cannot go back to my district and say that with a $24 billion surplus, this is as much property tax relief that we can do.”

Harrison and Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, both called the budget “liberal,” but for starkly different reasons: Harrison chastised the bill for alleging funding diversity, equity and inclusion policies, while Hinojosa called budgeting for school vouchers “a blank check” for private schools.

Amendments that would have altered Education Savings Accounts, also known as vouchers, were either suspended or placed in Article XI, killing any opportunity for discussion through the day and night.

Toward the end of the final floor discussion, Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur, pressed House Appropriations Chair Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, on whether he supported the defunding of the Texas Lottery Commission and economic development and tourism in the governor’s office. The first amendment of the night struck all appropriations from both funds, a move from House Democrats to deny their Republican counterparts from directing those funds elsewhere. Bonnen said discussion with senators would be crucial in deciding whether those funds would be restored.

The supplemental budget, House Bill 500, was also passed, which appropriates funds for expenses in the current budget cycle that may occur. The main budget now moves to conference with the Senate before heading to the governor.

A proposal to defund universities because they offer LGBTQ+ studies draws questions

Representatives clashed over two amendments that would strike all appropriated funds to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University because they provide courses and programs in LGBTQ+ studies, grinding a quick succession of near-unanimous votes to a halt.

Few amendments pressing universities to abandon LGBTQ+ studies made it to a floor discussion. Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur, explained that he suggested ending the state’s allocation of almost $900 million to the University of Texas because such courses continue to be offered by the university despite criticism from state and federal officials.

Hopper’s proposal to divert money from the university also said that it offers “a program or course that does not comply with the biological reality that there are only two sexes – male and female – and they are not changeable.”

Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons, D-Houston, pressed Hopper on whether his amendment considered the study of intersex people, who are born with ambiguous sex traits or chromosome combinations outside of XX or XY. “I don’t even know what that means,” Hopper said in response to several repeated questions from Simmons about intersex people.

After the amendment faced three points of order, one from Simmons and two from Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, all of which were ultimately withdrawn, the amendment itself was withdrawn.

The second amendment, from Brent Money, R-Greenville, aimed to remove almost $400 million from Texas State University for similar reasons, but was withdrawn after a brief floor discussion in which Money was asked if he was aware of the role that the university plays in school safety preparedness for the state.

Democrats’ amendment to expand Medicaid rejected

The House, largely on party lines, voted down a perennial Democratic effort to expand Medicaid in Texas, with Republicans in opposition citing millions in fraud and other priorities for funding, such as property tax cuts.

The amendment would direct the state to expand Medicaid eligibility to the fullest extent permitted by federal law – “to finally bring home the federal dollars we are already paying into the system,” said state Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, who has filed measures to expand Medicaid every session since 2019. “To finally cover over a million of our uninsured neighbors. To finally take action to save lives, strengthen our economy and uplift our communities.”

The measure, which failed 85 to 63, would have instructed the Health and Human Services.

Commission to expand state eligibility to include every category of person for whom the federal government matches funds. The federal government would pick up 90% of the cost of expansion, which Bucy said would cover 1.2 million more Texans, bring $110 billion in federal dollars into the state economy over the next decade, support 230,000 new jobs and relieve rural hospitals especially of $7 billion per year in uncompensated care.

Republicans have long blocked Medicaid expansion in Texas, which has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. State Reps. Janie Lopez of San Benito and Ryan Guillen of Rio Grande City were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the measure, while all Democrats supported it.

A proposal to take $70 million from Medicaid and divert the money to crisis pregnancy centers, meanwhile, won with broad Republican support earlier Thursday.

House votes to redirect $70 million from Medicaid to crisis pregnancy program

The House approved an amendment to take $70 million from state Medicaid spending and redirect it to Thriving Texas Families, a program formerly known as Alternatives to Abortion that a July 2024 investigation by ProPublica and CBS News found was riddled with waste and funneled millions in state dollars to anti-abortion nonprofits.

When Texas outlawed nearly all abortions in 2022, the state rebranded the program and shifted its mission to provide “community outreach, consultation, and care coordination for women with an unexpected pregnancy,” according to state law.

State Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, proposed and expanded the amendment on Thursday, saying it would provide counseling to pregnant people and their families without harming current Medicaid recipients.

Democrats railed against the measure, arguing that it would create a funding hole for Medicaid without providing funding to specific services that would help women. Several Democrats demanded to know specific services and providers that the funding would benefit.

“I’m disappointed that you’re taking money from indigent Texans to fund something that is smoke and mirrors,” state Rep. Lulu Flores, D-Austin, said.

The amendment was approved, 90 to 56, on a largely party-line vote.

Early fireworks kill a priority of the right

Democrats wasted no time causing a headache for the House’s right flank.

On the first budget amendment of the day, Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, made a last-minute change to eliminate funding for economic development and tourism in the governor’s office and for the Texas Lottery Commission. In approving that amendment, the House denied the chamber’s most conservative Republicans a mechanism to promote some of their priorities, many of which depended on plans to pull funds from those pots.

The House’s right flank didn’t realize what had happened at first, but it became clear a few minutes later when Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, brought forward an amendment that would have provided a 6% pay raise to employees in the Office of the Attorney General by rerouting money from the economic development and tourism fund.

Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, successfully contested Little’s amendment, arguing there was no money left to pull from. That killed Little’s amendment on a technicality.

It wasn’t immediately clear to conservatives how many of their amendments would be impacted by González’s move. Several amendments that hinged on drawing down economic development or lottery funding had already been swept into Article XI, slating them first on the chopping block in negotiations with the Senate.

Read more about González’s amendment in a special edition of tonight’s Blast, the Tribune’s premium politics newsletter.

Cutting water funds to offer property tax relief

One proposal in the House’s supplemental budget would take money away from the Texas Water Fund and give it to school districts for property tax relief.

State Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, filed an amendment that seeks to give $2.5 billion from the general revenue fund to the Texas Education Agency. Another part of his amendment says to strike a section of the budget that allocates the same amount of money to the Texas Water Fund.

The proposal from Harrison, who has staked out a path critical of leadership and who often finds he is short of allies to pass his bills in the House, comes as state leaders are actively working to solve Texas’ looming water crisis. House Speaker Dustin Burrows, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Gov. Greg Abbott have all said water is a priority for this legislative session. Abbott called for a “Texas-sized” investment in water infrastructure and called it an emergency item.

Water has become a big topic at the Capitol this year as Texas officials worry the state is gravely close to running out of water. A Texas Tribune analysis of data in the state’s 2022 water plan shows cities and towns in the state could face a severe water shortage by 2030 if there is a recurring, record-breaking drought across the state, and if state leaders fail to use strategies that secure water supplies.

Boosts for emergency response, wildfire management

House lawmakers want to allocate just over $1 billion from the general revenue fund to boost how the state responds to natural disasters.

In the House Supplemental Budget, lawmakers propose shifting money to the Texas A&M Forest Service and the Texas Division of Emergency Management for various disaster needs. Money to the forest service includes $394 million to buy airplanes for wildfire suppression, $100 million to operate the rural volunteer fire department assistance program, and another $100 million for grants available to volunteer fire departments.

The Texas Division of Emergency Management would receive $4 million to develop a first responder database, and $315 million to support regional emergency management operations facilities and resource staging areas, enhancing regional operations centers in San Angelo and Fort Worth, as well as to support emergency response operations.

State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, proposed an amendment that would also have Texas A&M Forest Service use money to prepare a report on the connection between wildfires and electrical infrastructure in Texas.

The proposals are in line with several bills that are being considered by the legislature, including House Bill 13, which would create the Texas Interoperability Council.

Threats to colleges to comply with DEI ban or lose funding

House Republicans have filed more than a dozen amendments to strengthen the ban on diversity, equity and inclusion in colleges.

Amendments from Reps. Andy Hopper of Decatur, Shelley Luther of Tom Bean, Tony Tinderholt of Arlington, Brent Money of Greenville and Brian Harrison of Midlothian threaten to defund public universities if they don’t comply with the ban. The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, the University of Houston and Texas State University would stand to lose all their state funding if they offer majors and minors related to LGBTQ studies or DEI.

The current House budget proposal says Texas A&M and UT-Austin should put a “good faith effort” into growing the diversity of their student body. But Money and Rep. Briscoe Cain want to strike that clause.

Since Texas lawmakers banned DEI practices at colleges and universities, they’ve asked colleges to provide extensive proof of compliance.

Harrison has also made calls for UT-Austin to end its gender and LGBTQ studies program. Texas A&M regents cut the LGBTQ studies minor in November after conservative criticism.

In a separate amendment, Rep. Nate Schatzline wants to clarify that colleges cannot use state money to teach students about gender-affirming procedures.

Attorney General’s office could see more cash

GOP lawmakers have offered up several amendments that would shift money from other parts of the budget into the attorney general’s office.

Three such amendments – from Reps. Briscoe Cain, James Frank and Mitch Little – would do so by pulling varying amounts from the Texas Lottery Commission. The agency has faced intense scrutiny over the use of couriers – third-party services that enable online purchasing of lottery tickets – and concerns that the practice could enable unfair or illegal activity.

Little, a Lewisville Republican, served as one of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s defense attorneys in his Senate impeachment trial. Another one of Little’s amendments proposes making a one-time payment of $63,750 to Paxton for the purpose of recouping the salary Paxton did not receive while impeached and suspended from office in 2023.

Another amendment from Little would extract more than $21 million from the governor’s music, film, TV and multimedia industries budget, which goes toward the Texas Film Commission, the Texas Music Office and a grant incentives program for the moving image industry. Under the amendment, the money would be used to give a 6% raise to employees of the attorney general’s office.

The office will have a new leader for part of the next budget cycle with Paxton forgoing reelection to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s primary.

– Renzo Downey, Jayme Lozano Carver, Sneha Dey and Jasper Scherer/The Texas Tribune contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/10/texas-house-budget-day/.

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