Budget day in the House: Texas lawmakers approve $337 billion spending plan

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. — Ayden Runnels

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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. – Ayden Runnels

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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. – Kayla Guo

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. - Kayla Guo

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. – Renzo Downey

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.

- Jayme Lozano Carver

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.

- Jayme Lozano Carver

Disclosure: Texas A&M University has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Almost 200 amendments were relegated to Article XI before debate on the floor began, effectively spelling their end.

Those included a number of plans to siphon money from the Texas Lottery Commission; a push to zero out a film incentives package; a sleeper test vote on school vouchers; a measure to require private schools that receive money from school vouchers to report how much instructional time is spent on religious education; and a proposal to make private schools that receive more than half of their revenue from school vouchers subject to the same requirements as public schools. -- Kayla Guo

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.

– Sneha Dey

Disclosure: Texas A&M University, University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, proposed a handful of amendments that would take the $1 billion currently set aside for a private school voucher program and use it instead to boost public school funding or provide a cost-of-living adjustment for retired teachers.

In one of his amendments, Bryant wants to put the $1 billion toward one-time bonuses for classroom teachers. Another of his proposals would increase the base amount of money public schools receive for each student — $6,160 —a level that has not increased since 2019. Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat who serves with Bryant on the House Public Education Committee, offered a similar change that would specifically increase districts’ base funding, known as the basic allotment, by $395.

None of the measures are likely to pass the Republican-controlled chamber, which has rejected proposals to raise the basic allotment in prior budget debates.

The House Public Education Committee voted last week to advance school voucher and public school funding legislation to the full chamber. The voucher bill would provide families access to roughly $10,000 in taxpayer dollars through state-managed education savings accounts to fund their children’s private school tuition.

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. - Jaden Edison and Jasper Scherer

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. - Jasper Scherer

Among Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s 40 priorities this legislative session are a $3 billion dementia research fund and $500 million in incentives to bring film and television production to Texas. Both have advanced in the Senate, which Patrick runs with an iron fist.

But in the House, some Republicans are going after those two priorities, arguing that they don’t fall under the proper role of government.

State Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian and head rabble-rouser, filed amendments to zero out both the film incentives package and the dementia research fund — and direct all $3.5 billion toward property tax cuts.

“Is taking $500 million in taxes from hard working Texans to give to liberal Hollywood a conservative thing to do??” Harrison posted on social media, railing against the measure. “Is that the role of government!?”

State Rep. Shelley Luther, R-Tom Bean, also proposed directing $155 million from film incentives toward border operations, which is already set to receive $6.5 billion under both chambers’ budget proposals.

And state Rep. Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, filed an amendment to spend $2 billion of the dementia research fund to reduce property taxes.

The film incentives proposal, Senate Bill 22, would direct the comptroller to put $500 million into a new Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund every two years until 2035. In March, the Senate approved the creation of the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas with the goal of attracting brain disease physicians and researchers to Texas. Senate Joint Resolution 3, which would require voter approval if passed by the Legislature, would fund the institute with $3 billion in surplus revenue. - Kayla Guo

The Texas Lottery Commission has faced intense scrutiny all legislative session for allowing courier companies to sell lottery and scratch-off tickets over a smartphone app — potentially, lawmakers say, illegally.

The outrage over the practice — and the Texas Lottery Commission’s lack of oversight over it — has turned the agency, in many lawmakers’ eyes, into a new bucket of money for their own priorities.

Lawmakers filed almost three dozen amendments funneling millions of dollars from the Texas Lottery to items like the Office of the Attorney General’s criminal investigations unit; an substance abuse treatment center for uninsured teenagers; property tax cuts; human trafficking victim services; and higher education research. - Kayla Guo

One proposal would provide $100 million more to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, to plug leaking and exploding wells — 44% of the agency’s current entire $226 million two-year budget.

Last fall, the commission requested an additional $100 million for emergency and high-priority actions and to cope with inflation. Danny Sorrell, the agency’s executive director, said in a letter to lawmakers that the commission already plugs wells where there is an urgent need whether or not it has the money in the budget. He said the practice had become unsustainable.

State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, said in an amendment filed this week that the commission must submit a report detailing the location of each inactive oil and gas well, the risks of leaving them unplugged, a plan to plug or restore them and any information the agency deems necessary.

The commission estimates roughly 150,000 inactive wells are scattered throughout Texas. These do not produce oil or natural gas. They are considered “orphaned” when they have no clear owner or if the company in charge of them is bankrupt. In an annual report detailing its oil field cleanup efforts, the commission estimated roughly 8,300, or 5% of all inactive wells, are orphaned. In 2024, it plugged a little more than a thousand of them, costing taxpayers $34 million. – Carlos Nogueras Ramos