A day before House lawmakers took a final vote on a $19.3 billion budget, the chief Republican leader in the Senate left open the possibility that his chamber could carve off even more fat, setting the stage for a more complicated negotiation process than first anticipated.
In February, Republicans released an $18.2 billion spending target for the new fiscal year. But the final version approved by the House this week overshoots that target by more than $1 billion.
At a press conference Tuesday morning, Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said his chamber would make adjustments in university and K-12 publication education spending.
“We set some early targets, and the House budget probably exceeds a number of those targets,” Berger said. “I think the Senate budget will come closer to the original targets.”
The House passed its budget Wednesday evening after two days of intense floor debate. The final tally: 72-47. Five Democrats joined all 68 members of the Republican caucus in voting for the spending plan, a margin great enough to withstand a veto from Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue.
The House version cuts university spending by 15.5 percent and K-12 education by about 10 percent. Indications are that the Senate will move toward reversing those numbers — fewer cuts to universities and more to secondary public education.
But this potential conflict may not develop. As recently as Monday, House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, said the two chambers maintained a good working relationship. “I expect the process in the Senate to go fairly quickly, and then the conferencing process to go equally,” he said.
And the buzz from inside the General Assembly is that the Senate might choose to adopt the House budget as is, in the hopes that the Democrats who backed the House version would not switch their votes if Gov. Bev Perdue — as expected — vetoes whatever budget emerges from the legislature. The first-term governor proposed her own $20-billion spending plan in February that has fewer cuts and relies on an extension of most of a temporary 1-cent sales tax.
Despite the veto-proof majority in the House, Perdue said Wednesday that she expects the five Democrats who voted for the GOP budget to end up in her corner.
“They will be with me when the going gets tough,” she said. “If we have to make hard decisions, I can take that to the bank.”
Michael Bitzer, associate professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, said differences between the House and Senate on spending priorities is a classic political dilemma.
“When you’re dealing with the amount of cuts and limitations on revenues, there is going to be a lot of horse trading going on even before they get to dealing with the governor,” Bitzer said. “The Senate probably feels like it can take a bit harsher cut to [the budget] and probably force the governor to meet them more than half way.”
On another front, both the House and Senate recently voted unanimously to extend the crossover deadline — a benchmark by which non-revenue bills must be passed by one chamber to be eligible for consideration in the short session next year — from May 12 to June 9. That gives legislators more opportunity to push through non-fiscal measures.
Even though the 2012 election is 19 months away, political parties already are using the budget as a tool to excite their constituencies, Bitzer said.
“Both Republicans and Democrats are going to use this budget as a possible sledgehammer to wake their bases up and get them energized and, for lack of a better term, show them the threat that the other side is posing,” he said.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.