CONCORD, N.H. — A roughly $15.9 billion two-year spending plan that would make significant cuts at several state entities received a stamp of approval Thursday from the full New Hampshire Senate, as lawmakers reached the final stage of their budgeting process.
While this version restores much of the spending the House had cut, it still calls for the elimination of about 60 positions in the Department of Corrections, a 10.5 percent reduction in funding to the university system, and many other trims.
Senate President Sharon M. Carson, who presides over the 24-member chamber in which Republicans hold a supermajority, told colleagues that nobody gets everything they want in a budget, but the plan senators refined over the past two months will serve Granite Staters.
“This budget makes tough choices with limited resources and doesn’t ask to increase the tax burden on New Hampshire families,” Carson said, noting that senators had responded to constituent concerns by restoring Medicaid reimbursement rates and including resources for mental health services and people with developmental disabilities.
Democrats contended, however, that Republican leaders had set the stage for a tight budget cycle by cutting taxes without raising enough revenues elsewhere to maintain the same level of services.
Senator Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, the Democratic minority leader, said her GOP colleagues shouldn’t be celebrated for responding to a problem they caused.
“The arsonists don’t get credit for putting out the fire,” she said. “That fire burns until we create a system that works for everyone.”
Democrats offered a series of unsuccessful floor amendments on Thursday to highlight budget provisions they oppose, including the budget’s plan to charge premiums for certain Medicaid beneficiaries who earn more than the federal poverty threshold — a proposal Democrats argued is effectively “an income tax” on vulnerable people, though Republicans disputed that characterization.
“This is not an income tax,” Republican Senator Regina M. Birdsell said three times, as she made the case that charging Medicaid premiums can help to prepare beneficiaries to transition to other health insurance plans.
The budget’s planned expansion of New Hampshire’s voucher-like Education Freedom Account program also came up repeatedly during debate, as Democrats argued Republicans were placing the interests of wealthy families over other priorities.
While the EFA program currently allows families that earn up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level to take their child’s state share of K-12 education funding and spend it on private school tuition or certain other educational expenses, the budget would remove that income-based eligibility cap altogether. That would allow families who are already enrolled in private schools to begin receiving EFA money.
Megan Tuttle, president of National Education Association in New Hampshire, said the Senate approved an “unjust” budget that would “deepen the inequities in our school funding system.”
Republicans pushed back against criticisms of the EFA program, saying the school-choice tool has been a lifeline for some students and should be expanded to give all families flexibility in where and how their children learn.
Riffing on the argument his Democratic counterparts had made with regard to Medicaid premiums, Republican Senator James P. Gray said he wonders whether denying someone access to the EFA program based on their income might also be construed as income tax.
While the chamber’s Republican supermajority approved the budget legislation without a single Democratic vote, the GOP caucus wasn’t lockstep.
Republican Senator Keith Murphy voted against both pieces of legislation that comprise the state budget, saying he has concerns about the basis for some of the higher revenue projections that enabled the Senate to undo many cuts made by the House.
“Revenue estimates should be based on real numbers, not hopes and dreams,” he wrote on social media.
Republican Senator Victoria L. Sullivan voted in favor of House Bill 1 but against House Bill 2, saying she also has concerns about the revenue projections and disagrees with the way the budget plan would address a shortfall in the retirement system for certain public employees, including police and firefighters.
Sullivan said there was an alternative proposal that she could live with, but she worried the proposal that made it into the budget would be too big of a burden on property taxpayers. “We just cannot afford it,” she said on social media.
The next step is for the House and Senate to reconcile the differences between their two versions of the budget, which likely will entail forming a committee of conference. The deadline for action on the committee of conference report would be June 26, with the new budget taking effect July 1.
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