The Senate unveiled its proposed budget Thursday morning with the first floor vote on the scheduled for next Monday night. The move follows the House tentatively passing its own budget draft in a 72–36 vote on Wednesday afternoon.
At 46 pages, the Senate’s proposal is much shorter than the House’s 271-page budget. Senate leaders told press the draft outlines funding priorities in an effort to ensure progress between the two chambers.
“In the absence of an agreement with the House on changes to the budget, this is kind of the baseline things to maintain commitments from the previous budget, and others that we felt were essential moving forward,” said Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Caldwell.
Under the revised Senate budget, HB 317, education funding would receive an additional $155 million. The Senate draft also fully funds opportunity scholarships with an additional $463 million, similar to the House’s $480 million proposal. The universal school choice program had exhausted funds due to overwhelming demand for education alternatives.
The Senate plan also provides a total of $136.5 million to extend the childcare stabilization grants, using taxpayer money to subsidize childcare providers and thereby redistributing childcare expenses among North Carolinians, a proposal almost identical to the House version. About $111 million would be pulled from the General Fund, and $25.5 million would come from federal block grant funding.
When asked why childcare isn’t fully funded — the anticipated “funding cliff” was estimated at more than $300 million — Hise explained that while the federal government temporarily funded it, that subsidy doesn’t exist anymore. By covering some of the cost, the state is picking up brand-new spending, which Hise says is not a long-term solution.
“I think you’ll find a consensus for a lot of people that this kind of temporary grant money for salary supplements is not a long-term solution,” Hise said. “It’s a band-aid on the process, and we will be back starting in January to begin to deal with what the actual needs are of childcare.”
Medicaid is funded one the Senate plan with an additional $359 million, also comparable to the House proposal. Other areas of focus include funding water and wastewater treatment, affordable housing, and extra appropriations for broadband expansion. Though a significant amount of the Senate proposal aligns with what the House filed earlier this week, many smaller funding initiatives are left out under the Senate plan. The Senate’s bill does not increase teacher salaries or state employee salaries beyond those scheduled increases already contained in the biennial budget passed in the Fall of 2023.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations/Base Budget approved the draft on Thursday morning. Earlier this week, Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, told the Carolina Journal that the House is not only overspending but also using funds from reserve accounts to fund non-essential projects, which he opposes.
SEE ALSO: Millions earmarked for these 8 items in House budget proposal
The House is expected to pass its budget during its third and final reading on Thursday, and the Senate is expected to hold a full floor vote on Monday night for their proposal.
The post Senate and House budgets align on major funding but differ on salary increases first appeared on Carolina Journal.
The post Senate and House budgets align on major funding but differ on salary increases appeared first on First In Freedom Daily.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Brianna Kraemer
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://firstinfreedomdaily.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.