Jacob Ogles
The Transportation, Tourism and Economic Development budget silo has some of the most important spending to lawmakers.
But as a Thursday deadline on budget conferences passed, the House and Senate still had major disagreements on spending. Indeed, the chambers still differed about how much money was available to spend on important issues like disaster relief.
For starters, the total spending in the silo remained roughly $503 million apart in the chamber. The Senate Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development Appropriations Committee budgeted more than $17.9 billion in its latest offer. But a counter from the House Transportation & Economic Development Budget Subcommittee included more than $18.4 billion in spending.
But in one sense, it’s misleading to see the House as wanting to spend more.
One of the single greatest budget disparities comes in funding to set aside for open federally declared natural disasters. The Senate this week dramatically reduced its budget for the item to $100 million, down more than $740 million from what the chamber originally budgeted.
The reason, according to the Senate President’s Office, was uncertainty about the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under President Donald Trump. As the federal administration considers reducing or eliminating the agency and turning power to the states, it’s unclear what federal money exists.
Senate officials said the change reflected more of a back-end change, and stressed that communities will still be able to request funding as long as the federal dollars are available.
But the House has not changed its budget to accommodate speculation about FEMA. The last offer from the chamber still includes $646.3 million for disaster funding for communities.
The chambers agree on a number of big-ticket items. That includes a $50 million increase to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, about $150 million to establish an additional operating budget authority for Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, almost $164 million for the State Housing Initiatives Partnership Program, and upward of $13.4 billion for a transportation work program.
But the Senate wants to budget $23.3 million in cultural and museum grants for the fiscal year, and the House wants less than $5.9 million for that purpose. Meanwhile, the House has almost $23.4 million set aside for Department of State project requests, while the Senate has just $12.7 million budgeted for that purpose.
The negotiations at committee level are now done, so discussions will be bumped to higher-ranking members. House Budget Chair Lawrence McClure and Senate Appropriations Chair Ed Hooper will have their time with the discussion before final talks ultimately happen between Senate President Ben Albritton and House Speaker Daniel Perez.
