Progressives, Teachers’ Union Outraged As Arizona Legislature Passes Bipartisan Budget

arizona capitol

On Wednesday, the Arizona House of Representatives approved a budget on a bipartisan vote for fiscal year 2024 that is expected to be signed by Governor Katie Hobbs. All of the budget bills received strong bipartisan support as they passed both chambers.

The budget is the product of months-long deliberate negotiations between House Speaker Ben Toma, Senate President Warren Petersen, and Hobbs.

“I am thankful to our Democratic caucuses for entrusting Leader Epstein (@MitziEpstein) and I to negotiate today’s framework with Governor @GovernorHobbs and the Republican Majority,” tweeted Rep. Andres Cano.

Hobbs was widely criticized for vetoing an earlier version of the budget. Since that time, she set a record for the most vetoes ever by an Arizona governor, which appears to have damaged her popularity numbers. Passage of this budget is expected to alleviate some of the criticism that she has functioned in too partisan of a manner in her first year.

However, she is now facing loud criticism from her liberal base. The teachers’ union associated groups and even Democratic Party leadership is disavowing the budget deal due in part to the fact that it protects Arizona’s school choice Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.

“BREAKING: AZ House passes the K-12 budget 43-16, betraying AZ public schools by failing to cap the universal ESA vouchers that threaten to bankrupt AZ,” tweeted the teachers’ union group, Save Our Schools. “Thank you to the 16 #PublicSchoolProud lawmakers who took a principled stand by voting NO. Fighting for what’s right matters.”

House Republican leaders hailed the budget’s passage as a huge win for Arizona families and the state.

“From day one, our Majority has been focused on getting the job done for our constituents: putting Arizona families first, protecting the vulnerable, and growing opportunity and freedom. We’re conservatives,” said Speaker Toma. “We believe you should keep more of your money and the government should spend less. That’s why we believe this is Arizona’s Budget — a budget that reflects our needs, gives back, spends smart, and addresses real issues. We needed a budget that the Governor would sign that accomplishes our goal of putting Arizona families first. This budget accomplishes both.”

“Our Republican Majority prefers not to spend hard-earned taxpayer money but, if it’s going to be spent, we should spend it wisely,” said House Majority Leader Leo Biasiucci.

“Right off the top, we’re giving back 10% of one-time spending to help Arizona families with a tax rebate of $250 for every child under 17. This is a budget that invests in our economy, improves the infrastructure we all rely on, and solves problems faced by our most vulnerable.”

Also passed by the House today was HCR 2050, a concurrent resolution sponsored by Representative Matt Gress, to allow K-12 school districts to exceed the aggregate expenditure limitation in the 2024 fiscal year.

“While conservatives are always going to wish the overall budget was smaller, this budget is still a win for conservatives, and Toma and Petersen in particular.” said one Republican observer. “The left is mad as hell that a lot of the increased spending is one-time spending instead of being added to future baselines, and Republican priorities all got protected. In the old days, Napolitano and a group of Republicans would join Democrats to pass bad budgets. Now you have Hobbs and a group of Democrats joining to pass a mostly Republican budget. That’s a win!”

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