The floor debate for next year’s budget begins Monday at 1pm.
To see the briefing provided to House members earlier this week, click here .
To see more detail, click here .
Of course, if you’d like to watch the floor debate, you can click here . (Link may not be correct if watching from IPhone. If needed, visit www.scstatehouse.gov and click on House Video). Debate Monday should go til 6pm (estimate). Monday is usually the day when the non-contested areas of the budget receive roll call votes. Sometimes it’s 200 votes cast in one single day. Generally, those votes are almost always unanimous or 90%-10% votes. Tuesday is when you can actually see live debate. We should start in the morning on Tuesday (9am? 10am?) and go longer than we do Monday (most likely into the evening). Depending on progress/amendments Tuesday could go past midnight (it has in the past) and/or we will return Wednesday to hopefully have 3rd reading. The budget (like all legislation) requires 3 readings.
Once the budget passes the House, it must also pass the Senate. After that time, a Budget Conference Committee (3 members of each body) will meet to debate differences and reach resolution. From there, the budget goes to the Governor’s Office where he will certainly have vetoes for us to consider at a later date.
The state’s budget cycle is from July 1st each year thru June 30th.