Published date: March 10, 2025
Week 9 Report
Both the House and Senate are working through floor action – voting on the bills that made it through the committee process. They will keep going through March 12th, and then return to committee hearings, but, this time, on bills from the other chamber.
The Senate has been consistent this week, running about 20 bills a day and finishing about 4 pm most days, whereas the House will go long periods in caucus meetings and run longer, sometimes late into the evening. The House worked Saturday, going late into Sunday morning, and the both House and Senate will come back Monday. As of this writing, the House has passed 185 bills while the Senate has passed 193.
There are still 149 senate bills the Senate could still consider (72 remain the Rules Committee and 77 are on the senate floor calendar). The House has 128 bills still in the Rules Committee and about 91 on the floor calendar. Given their respective paces, neither chamber can pass all those bills, and many of the remaining bills are the most contentious so expect a lot of bills to “die” by Wednesday. Many of us won’t be unhappy with that outcome.
As we passed the halfway point this week, we are switching our angst to budgets. The revenue forecast will come out on the 18th to give the budget writers time to introduce their proposals, hold their hearings and pass them out before the weekend. We expect the Senate to unveil their operating budget first, perhaps on the 19th, and the Senate transportation budget will likely appear on the 24th. We are unsure when the House intends to run their budgets.
The budget writers must write budgets with an eye on the federal newsfeed: Will tariffs impact their revenue projections? Will Congress pass Medicaid cuts? Washington is particularly impacted by Medicaid cuts. The Washington State Standard published an article this week titled ‘Here’s how Congress could push Washington State lawmakers into a special session.” It explains how federal Medicaid cuts would impact Washington.
The House and Senate transportation budgets could look very different. It depends on their problem statement: the House is focused on the $4 billion deficit over the next six years. The Senate may focus on the next biennium which makes the problem statement about $1 billion over two years. In each case, projects get cut, but the program cuts would be deeper if attempting to balance the budget over 6 years.
The transportation revenue forecast is not anticipated to provide any relief. The operating revenue update in February showed a slight 2.6% increase in collections, about $60.5 million, however, cumulatively, tracked collections since the November 2024 forecast are $17.2 million (0.2%) lower than forecasted.