The Latest Breaking News from Joan Huffman

There are $5 billion and several political wedges standing between the House and Senate plans, which now move into conference committee with less than five weeks before session ends.

The proposal for the 2024-25 budget cycle includes $142.1 billion in general revenue spending — about $5 billion higher than the proposal approved last week by the Texas House — at a time when lawmakers have a historic $32.7 billion surplus at their disposal this session.

Sen. Joan Huffman said the bill was in response to increased violent crime since 2019. Legislative researchers could not determine how the bill would affect the state’s prison population.

The bill, a priority for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, is part of a larger effort to limit the power of elected prosecutors, especially in Texas’ largest, left-leaning counties.

While the state guarantees law enforcement officers, like Department of Public Safety troopers, a $500,000 death benefit for their families if they die on duty, National Guard troops who stand shoulder to shoulder with those DPS officers on Operation Lone Star don’t have the same benefit.

The vote ensured the Senate met its constitutional requirement to redraw districts in the first regular session after publication of the 2020 census results.

Two bills that advanced in House and Senate committees on Wednesday both exempt any lawmaker who has already taken advantage of the benefit.

Gov. Greg Abbott and state lawmakers have taken a tough-on-drugs approach to the fentanyl crisis, primarily pushing efforts to increase criminal penalties.

Under Senate Bill 23, all felonies involving a gun would incur a mandatory 10-year prison sentence. It’s meant to curb crime, despite the lack of correlation between harsher sentences and crime rates.

In its first bill passed this session, the Texas Senate sought to ensure juvenile mental health hospitalizations are reported to the federal firearm background check system.

Budget proposals would boost state spending for the current budget cycle for projects ranging from mental health hospitals to state pay raises. This would leave $27 billion in surplus for the next two years.