The Budget Process: The House Amendments

Last week the House released their budget amendments over the course of three days. In total, 1,566 amendments were filed by various members of the House, the most seen in the past decade. These amendments were mainly earmarks, meaning they’re funding requests for specific projects and needs for various municipalities throughout the Commonwealth. However, some of them also amend Massachusetts general laws. Beginning next week (4/24/22), these amendments will head to the House floor for debate as well as voting, with the debate typically lasting a few days. Once the debate ends, the budget bill will be passed on to the Senate to release their own amendments next month.

These amendments reflect the priorities of the House through where they decide to allocate more or less money, in comparison to Governor Healey’s original budget. While most amendments are serious ones, the first amendment is a much more light-hearted one. The Ted Lasso Kindness Manifesto, sponsored by Rep. Pignatelli (D), aims to guide the conduct in the House of Representatives using lines from the hit TV show Ted Lasso. This includes treating others with unwavering compassion and channeling the 10-second memory of a goldfish when things go awry. While perhaps not the most consequential of the amendments, it serves as an example of an attitude that the members of the House will hold during this session.

The amendments cover almost every domain, earmarking funds for a variety of programs and projects across the Commonwealth. Some of the largest monetary amendments pertained to several unsurprising categories: housing, education, public health, and economic development. These categories saw some of the largest monetary increases in amendments between versions of the budget as well. 

Housing has been at the forefront of political attention and the House certainly reflected that concern in their amendments. With $353 million initially budgeted for housing needs, these amendments aim to increase housing funds. Several amendments aimed to support the homeless population in Massachusetts, including Amendment 375, with $3.5 million bookmarked for Statewide Homelessness Support Services and Amendment 1441 which reserves $8.4 million towards permanent supportive housing units. A further $10 million was earmarked in Amendment 505 for the Immigrant Family Services Institute to support migrant resettlement. The largest of such earmarks was an increase of $69 million towards a program granting residential assistance to families in transition in Amendment 842. With the serious challenge of housing affordability, these amendments place more funds towards programs aiming to provide relief, especially to groups most in need. 

Education, unsurprisingly, is usually allocated a sizable portion of the budget, and several key amendments are aiming to increase this potential funding significantly. Amendment 41 aims to increase the Chapter 70 funding for schools by $100 million. Chapter 70 is the major program of state aid for public elementary and secondary schools. There is an additional $140 million reserved towards public higher education capital in Amendment 491, as well as $4 million for the Hunger Free Campus Initiative in Amendment 465. This highlights a focus on upper-level educational needs. The House has also included several amendments aimed towards making higher education more affordable, including $10 million for University of Massachusetts diversity grants (Amendment 495) and $17 million funding for state universities to support a one-year tuition and fee freeze (Amendment 651). Education is always a top budgetary concern, but it appears as though this year, the House has taken special interest in higher education and the need for increased accessibility. 

The healthcare domain has also seen a sizable amount of increased funding from the amendments, which is hardly shocking considering it is the area with most of the budget allocated for it at 52.6% of Governor Healy’s original budget. Many of the amendments were towards grant programs including $15 million for public health excellence grants (Amendment 650). The Department of Public Health’s  grant programs also received an increase of $4.8 million (Amendment 251) and $3.6 million (Amendment 198). One of the largest increases was an additional $36 million for the DPH’s hospital operations in Amendment 1474. There has additionally been a $22.8 million increase going towards expanding community-based addiction services in Amendment 689. With the heightened awareness of substance-abuse disorders, increased funding towards these programs can hopefully help address the deep rooted opioid epidemic in a productive way.

Some other key amendments were targeted towards stimulating economic development. Amendment 377 earmarks $25 million for business loans specifically for Black, Latino, Indigenous and historically underserved small businesses. Furthermore, unrestricted local aid was marked to be increased by $55.8 million in Amendment 1056. Finally, the Division of State Parks and Recreation could see an appropriation increase of $100 million by Amendment 278. This is hardly surprising considering the importance of economic stimulation for the budget. However, a stronger focus on supporting small BIPOC-owned businesses and the Parks and Recreation division show the topics of concern for the House.

With all of the House amendments now filed, the budget process will resume Monday, April 24th, when debates will begin. During these debates, the entire House gathers to discuss the inclusion of these amendments in the final fiscal year budget bill. In the past decade, an average of 482 House amendments were passed following the debates. Typically, this debate process lasts around three days, but in some instances it will last up to five. Once the debates are concluded, the House then approves their final amended version of the budget, which is then sent to the Senate to repeat this process.

After the House budget is sent to the Senate, the Senate Ways and Means Committee will then release their own budget recommendations in May that are based on the Governor’s proposal as well as the House proposal. This budget typically will contain less amendments than the House version. The Senate budget proposal will then go through the debate process as well to produce a final amended Senate version of the budget. As the Senate budget contains less amendments, the debate process will most likely take less time than the House debate.

Once the final Senate budget is approved a Conference Committee will be made to consolidate the House and Senate versions of the budget and reconcile their differences. Every Conference Committee is made up of three members of each chamber, including a member of the minority party in each chamber. At the conclusion of this committee a final budget composed of both House and Senate amendments will be sent to both of the chambers for a vote in order to finalize the budget. After this vote, the budget bill will be sent to Governor Healey for either approval or a veto. Approval on this bill creates the final budget.

With over 1,500 amendments filed by the House, it is yet to be seen how long the debate will last and what amendments will be approved. As mentioned prior, the appropriations and earmarks are an incredibly important aspect of the budget, especially for members of Congress who want to follow through on funding for their communities. While it feels like we are very deep into the budget process, we are still only in the beginning stages and there is still much more to come.. Keeping track of the status of the budget seems daunting, but InstaTrac makes it easy. With each bill’s outlined history and a status bar, the progress of each bill is easily seen and kept track of. Additionally, with daily bill and amendment alerts, InstaTrac does the hard work of tracking for you! Never miss a blog post - and stay on top of what’s happening on Beacon Hill! Follow us on Twitter,Linkedin, Youtube, or Instagram.