Budget wins House approval

This is a sad day for Texas. Go to the actual link and check out the comments.
Angela

Budget wins House approval
By Kate Alexander | Sunday, April 3, 2011, 10:29 PM

House Bill 1, a spartan $164.5 billion two-year budget measure, sailed through the Texas House Sunday on a preliminary vote of 98 to 49 that broke largely along party lines.

The Republican majority rolled over the Democrats to approve the 2012-13 budget, which will spend $23 billion less than the current budget and institutes deep cuts to education, social services and essentially every area of state government.

Senators have been working on their own version of the budget, which was as almost as lean as the House bill at the beginning of the session.

But they have since taken steps to add at least $10 billion to that plan to mitigate the cuts to public education and Medicaid.

The spending gap will be major point of contention with House and Senate appointees meet to hammer out the differences in conference committee.

Correction: Two Republicans, Aaron Pena and David Simpson, voted against the bill. An earlier version of this blog said it was a party-line vote.

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