Budget Bill Week, Budget Targets, and more
Budget Bill Week
With less than a week until the third and final committee deadline, it is budget bill week at the Minnesota legislature. The House and Senate are crafting their omnibus budget bills based around the budget target agreement released last week by Governor Tim Walz, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic and House Speaker Melissa Hortman. Major appropriations bills must be acted upon in their committees before the deadline on Wednesday. Several committees heard and voted on their omnibus bills this week, though some committees are still in the process of finalizing their bills. Committees that have acted upon their omnibus bills met for the last time this week, while committees with work left to do have until April 4, when the legislature will adjourn for spring break. The legislature will begin to vote on budget bills after they return on April 10.
All committees have heard their omnibus bills except for the tax committee in the House and Senate. Below is more detailed information on omnibus packages:
Education Finance
- Increased per student formula funding (House and Senate)
- Increased funding for special education (House and Senate)
- New funding to hire student support staff (House and Senate)
Higher Education
- Increased funding for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and MNSCU
- Increased funding for the University of Minnesota
- Scholarship programs
Children and Families (House Only)
- Increased funding for early learning scholarships and childcare
- Funds for emergency shelters
- Expansion of voluntary prekindergarten
Health and Human Services (Senate Only)
- $1.3 billion increased funding for FY2023
Gov. Walz, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic and House Speaker Melissa Hortman have reached an agreement on budget targets. The targets provide details to finance committees on how much money is available to spend in their omnibus budget bills. The budget targets provide the rough outline — but it is up to committee chairs to finalize details of how to spend their slice of the budget.
The agreement will use all the $17.5 billion surplus in the biennial budget. Here is a breakdown of the larger components of the budget framework $3 billion in tax cuts:
- $2.3 billion for infrastructure projects
- $2.2 billion for K-12 education and pre-kindergarten
- $2.2 billion for one capita/infrastructure projects
- $1.178 billion for children and families
- $1 billion for housing
- $650 million for public safety
- $255 million for energy and climate
- $100 million for broadband expansion
The full budget agreement can be found here.
Following the global budget agreement released by DFL leadership, Senate Republicans pitched their own proposal. Though the House passed the DFL’S two infrastructure bonding bills with bipartisan support, the bills failed to pass the Senate with the supermajority required for bonding. Senate Republicans instead are hoping to use the bonding bills as a bargaining chip to pass their compromise offer.
In exchange for the passage of the DFL’s bonding package, they want:
- An omnibus tax bill that includes full elimination of income tax on social security, and no tax increases.
- An omnibus health and human services bill that addresses problems with long term care and nursing facilities
- Omnibus agriculture bill increasing spending by $80 million in FY2024-2025 and $80 million in FY2026-2027
Senate DFL leaders have previously stated that they would circumvent the required supermajority by using an all-cash infrastructure bill that would require a simple majority.
April 4: Third Committee Deadline
April 5-10: Legislative break
April 19: State of the State address
May 22: Last Day of the 2023 Legislative Session