Senate budget plan wins final OK before panel
'The vast amount of it will make our state a better place, make it a powerhouse economically,' said state Sen. Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton. 'It was tough work, hard work. It was an excellent product for the state of New Hampshire."
The two Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee praised their Republican colleagues for reversing several hundred million dollars of cuts made in the House-approved budget.
But they said they voted against the budget plan for a lack of spending on housing and child care and for raising costs for working families, including a new health care premium for many families on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
'The Senate has made improvements to the budget that the House sent us. I don't think we can confuse 'better' with 'adequate,'' said Senate Deputy Democratic Leader Cindy Rosenwald of Nashua.
'This bill does nothing to lower costs for Granite Staters. In fact, it raises costs in many ways.'
The panel approved by the same 6-2 vote a budget trailer bill (HB 2) that makes more than 260 changes in state law needed to carry out the budget priorities.
'This was a difficult road to go down. We were able to restore a lot of what the House had taken out,' said Senate Majority Leader Regina Birdsell, R-Hampstead.
Senate President Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry, served on a budget committee for the first time in her 21 years in the Legislature.
'Over the last two biennium (four years), we had a lot of money, most of it an infusion of cash from the federal government," Carson said. "We spent that money and were smart about how we spent it, but it is gone. It is gone and now we have to go back to the New Hampshire way of living within our means."
Finance Chairman James Gray, R-Rochester, noted the committee's first actions erased House cuts in payments to Medicaid providers and in services for mental health and people with developmental disabilities.
'This is a tight budget year, and that means we have to make tough choices with limited state dollars. Our focus has been on targeted state spending on New Hampshire's most vulnerable populations,' Gray said.
The two-year Senate plan includes $67 million more in state aid to the University System of New Hampshire than the House budget.
But Sen. Dan Innis, R-Bradford, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, said the $85 million a year in the Senate budget looks small, since the state was giving the University System $100 million a year in 2006.
'We need to start viewing both of these entities as investments in our future rather than spending,' Innis said. 'The $100 million every year, inflation-adjusted would be $166 million; we're spending $85 million, which is half. That's just embarrassing — it just is.'
+++
What's Next: The full Senate votes on the recommended budget on Thursday.
Prospects: A House-Senate conference committee will meet later this month to seek a compromise between the two spending bills.
klandrigan@unionleader.com
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