House lawmakers will try for a second time this week to pass a state budget proposal, after Wednesday’s failure of the Republican leadership’s preferred spending plan.
With Thursday's deadline for the House to produce a budget - the pressure is on.
By Wednesday night, six alternative budget plans had been filed with the clerk’s office – none of them with the support of Speaker Shawn Jasper and his leadership team. Two are from Democrats looking to put more money back into the House’s budget and one is from a group of conservative Republicans trying to do just the opposite.
This group was among the 60-odd Republicans who voted against their party’s budget proposal Wednesday on the grounds that it spent too much.
The conservatives’ amendment would give the Governor and legislative fiscal committee the authority to cut up to $219 million across all state agencies by the end of the year – a roughly 1.5 percent reduction across the board.
A similar proposal failed in the House on Wednesday. If the House cannot rally majority support for a budget by day’s end, it leaves the Senate with much more sway in writing the state’s next two-year spending plan.
