House v. Senate: The Better Budget Proposal:

Over the past month and a half in Massachusetts, the primary focus for the state legislature has been to draft and pass a proposal for the FY23 budget. This year’s budget process has invoked intense debate in both the House and Senate, with deliberations likely concluding in the Senate today. While each proposed FY23 budget allocates practically the same allotment of around $49.6 B, the budgets themselves differ in a number of ways. Looking at our data from this year as well as the past decade, an analysis of each budget reveals frequent differences that have occurred between House and Senate proposals. 

In general, since 2014, the House and Senate budgets have become increasingly robust, and not only in terms of their funding. Illustrated by the graph above, the trend for the number of amendments filed in each budget has seen an increase in the past decade. While the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted this pattern for a period, it appears that the FY23 proposals have re-established this tendency, with the most amendments yet being filed in the House and second most in the Senate. The major similarities between the budgets for the most part stop with this shift however, as shown further by this year’s proposals. 

Despite the fact that the number of amendments filed have followed a similar trajectory in each budget, the graph above also shows that this amount vastly differs between the two chambers. Although somewhat attributable to the Senate having fewer members, on average there are approximately 230 less amendments in the Senate version each year. Interestingly though, for the FY23 budget, senators averaged three times as many amendments filed per individual legislator than their counterparts in the House. This begs the question therefore as to why certain aspects of the House budget were not incorporated into the Senate version, if so many amendments were filed by each senator.

HB4700, the House’s proposal, funded a wide array of programs, including some not in the Senate version, such as free school meals and the incarcerated persons phone call initiative. While the Senate did have a slight edge in the number of refiled amendments in the budget, none of them sought to incorporate these and other programs that were funded in the House version. The explanation for this largely has to do with the different manner by which the House and Senate adopt changes to budgets. Representatives often file district specific line items and similar issue related amendments to one another, the latter of which usually is incorporated through an amendment bundle (related to one policy area). The Senate likewise makes use of bundles, but in this year’s budget the vast majority (approx. 78%) of amendments filed were funding line item changes. Considering senators represent a larger area than a representative, it makes sense why line items would be filed, however their inclusion may overwhelm the number of substantial policy related amendments that could be filed instead.

In summary, there is not necessarily one better budget proposal for FY23. The House benefits from filing theirs first, and also because of having less need to focus so heavily on one's district. The Senate, on the other hand, has legislators that are quite vocal for their community’s needs and select issue areas, which will likely continue in today’s debate. Understanding all the differences from each budget can still be quite difficult though, even after reading this brief analysis. No need to fear though, because InstaTrac can help! We have a full breakdown of every House and Senate budget from the past decade, and are available to help our clients find any budget specific information. For more information or to see a demo of our services, please reach out to info@instatrac.com.

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