Texas House set to vote on $337.4B state budget plan Thursday

AUSTIN — The Texas House is set to debate on Thursday a proposed $337.4 billion state spending plan for the next two years.
The legislation includes new money for teacher pay raises, property tax cuts, border security, medical research, a private school voucherlike program, and maternal and behavioral healthcare programs.
Passing a balanced spending plan for the 2026-27 cycle, which starts in September, is the only task the Texas Constitution requires lawmakers to do during their regular biennial legislative session.
The task at hand: Direct the spending of the Texas taxpayer dollars to run the business of the state.
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It’s a monumental charge that includes funding everything from new highway projects to port overhauls, from the social safety net to public schools, from police to forest rangers to universities and local projects.
Over the last couple of months, the House Appropriations Committee heard testimony from more than 300 witnesses and deliberated some 118 hours on more than $24 billion in requests for new money from state agencies to arrive at the spending proposal that state lawmakers will consider.
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The bill proposes spending $153.6 billion in state taxes and $100 billion in federal funds, among other funding sources.
The Texas Senate passed its own version of a spending plan in March.
The House budget debate is expected to last several hours and cover hundreds of proposed amendments, which range from targeting the beleaguered Texas Lottery Commission to LGBTQ issues and paying back Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for lost wages during the 2023 impeachment proceedings.
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After the House settles on its version of the new budget, leaders will negotiate with the Senate over key differences. The final budget bill will be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature, expected in June.
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The House will also vote on a separate spending bill that would earmark some of the $23 billion in unspent tax money still in state coffers to close out the current cycle.
Some targets for that money include a $2.5 billion investment in water infrastructure and $394 million to the Texas A&M Forest Service Agency to increase the state’s firefighting capabilities with wildfire suppression aircraft.
The House version of Senate Bill 1, which will become the General Appropriations Act when it is sent to Abbott, includes $75.6 billion to fund the Foundation School Program. The FSP directs funding to schools and composes the largest chunk of the budget.
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Abbott has stressed his top priority this session is to pass a school voucherlike proposal that would funnel public dollars to private schools.
State budget officials estimate an education savings account program would cost the state about $1 billion in its first year, the 2026-27 school year. That money is included in the budget bill.
SB 1 also includes $6.5 billion to continue Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s border security mission that has cost the state $11 billion since it was created in 2021.
Most of the funding would be divided between Abbott’s office; the Texas Military Department, which oversees the Texas National Guard; and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which sends troopers to the border from other parts of the state.
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The funding proposal includes the creation of more than 560 new commissioned officer positions for DPS to help address staffing problems created in the agency because of its participation in the Lone Star mission.
The plan also includes $3 billion for the creation of a Dementia Prevention and Research Institute and includes $386.4 million for tech updates and additional staffers for the Medicaid offices at Texas Health and Human Services to reduce snarls and wait times on applications and eligibility determinations.
An additional $100 million would be used to bolster the state’s child care scholarship program, which supporters hope will reduce its 90,000-family waitlist by about 10,000.
Texas could also expand the mental health beds available in state hospitals and community facilities across Texas through the $40 million included in the bill for such measures. New state mobile youth crisis outreach teams, which would provide counseling services to youth in their homes and at schools, would receive $772.8 million.
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The House budget bill includes $469.1 million for women’s health programs and maternal safety measures. Meanwhile, $3 billion is earmarked to create the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
The bill adds $850 million to establish a Texas State Technical College endowment fund to support capital projects.
It also proposes $378 million to increase salaries for adult and juvenile corrections and probation officers. It earmarks $142.4 million to increase funding for local and juvenile correction departments and $25 million to renovate armories across the state.
Voucher test vote
Although the bottom line is not expected to change throughout the course of the debate as the GOP-dominated House decides whether to add or remove items from the bill, hundreds of amendments have been filed that would shift money between programs, cap spending or address limitations on who can spend the money or how state funds could be spent.
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The debate was set to provide a test vote on Abbott’s school voucher-like proposal that would allow taxpayer funding to be spent on private school education, which has emerged as one of the top political fights this session.
Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, filed a budget amendment that would prohibit any additional funding for the proposal on top of the $1 billion in the proposed budget.
However, Howard said Wednesday that she will withdraw the budget amendment in favor of attempting to place a hard cap in the school choice bill when it comes up for a vote in the House.
“My amendment was meant to provide guardrails around the cap and was not intended to be a voucher test vote,” Howard said in a text message. “I will be withdrawing the amendment as it more appropriately should be attached to [Senate Bill] 2.”
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Budget analyses predict that the program’s size will grow to about $3.6 billion in 2030.
Other amendment proposals by lawmakers from both parties touch on the national political discourse and subject areas that have been in the news the last few years.
At least two Democratic lawmakers filed amendments asking the comptroller to study the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on industries, jobs and businesses across Texas.
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A different amendment asks the comptroller to create a tariff impact dashboard, allowg people who access the dashboard to search the change in prices over a period of time. Republicans and Democrats across the country have criticized Trump’s tariff policies, arguing the tariffs on foreign countries would raise prices in the United States.
Other Republican lawmakers have filed amendments to further strip any state funds from being used for any program or contract related to diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI.
Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, has filed an amendment asking Texas Health and Human Services to study the incidence and death rate for unvaccinated Texans and the risk to the general public’s health if Texans are unvaccinated.
While Wu’s amendment does not specify for what illness or disease the study is for, it comes as a deadly measles outbreak has developed in est Texas.
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Staff writers Philip Jankowski, Aarón Torres and Nolan McCaskill contributed to this report.