The House and Senate released their initial budget proposals this week and there’s lot’s of places that you can go to read about each. A quick summary looks something like this: The Senate 2-year base budget proposal is $213.4 billion compared to $221.3 billion for the House proposal (point of reference: the last base budget was $209.4 billion). That includes federal dollars. Among the money that they actually have control over, the two chambers are about $5.3 billion apart, with the Senate slightly below Comptroller Hegar’s revenue estimate ($104.9 billion) at $103.6 billion and the House about $4 billion over the revenue estimate at $108.9 billion. Below is a table comparing the proposed House and Senate budget based on Legislative Budget Board analysis for your perusal.
| House | Senate | |||||
| All Functions | Estimated/Budgeted 2016-2017 | Recommended 2018-2019 | Biennial Change |
Recommended 2018-2019 |
Biennial Change | 2018-2019 Difference (House - Senate) |
| Article I - General Government | $3,345.5 | $3,280.3 | -$65.2 | $3,258.9 | -$86.6 |
$21.4 |
| Article II - Health & Human Services | $33.621.7 | $34,628.6 | $1,006.9 | $32,596.0 | $164.3 |
$2,032.6 |
| Article III - Agencies of Education | $56,283.7 | $56,882.8 | $599.1 | $54,696.4 | -$1,587.3 |
$2,186.4 |
| Public Education | $41.594.1 | $42,018.4 | $424.3 | $40,522.4 | -$1,071.8 |
$1,496.0 |
| Higher Education | $14,689.6 | $14,864.4 | $174.8 | $14,174.0 | -$515.6 |
$690.4 |
| Article IV - The Judiciary | $503.3 | $508.8 | $5.6 | $503.6 | $0.3 |
$5.2 |
| Article V - Public Safety & Criminal Justice | $11,534.7 | $11,425.8 | -$108.9 | $11,556.1 | $21.4 |
-$130.3 |
| Article VI - Natural Resources | $835.0 | $853.0 | $17.9 | $769.1 | -$65.9 |
$83.9 |
| Article VII - Business & Economic Dev. | $1,176.9 | $553.4 | -$623.5 | $553.3 | -$623.6 |
$0.1 |
| Article VIII - Regulatory | $337.1 | $344.1 | $6.9 | $339.3 | $2.2 |
$4.8 |
| Article IX - General Provisions | $0.0 | $0.0 | $0.0 | -$1,058.0 | -$1,058.0 |
$1,058.0 |
| Article X - The Legislature | $400.8 | $384.1 | -$16.7 | $387.7 | -$13.1 |
-$3.6 |
| Total, All Articles | $108,038.7 | $108,860.9 | $822.1 | $103,602.3 | -$3,246.3 | $5,258.6 |
Source: Legislative Budget Board