Teacher pay raises, infrastructure projects and other spending stripped from Louisiana’s budget plan by the state House would be funded again under spending bills advanced Saturday by the Senate’s Finance Committee.

But in a display of political maneuvering by Senate President Page Cortez, money would only go to a swath of items — including $311 million in statewide hospital funding and tens of millions of dollars for lawmakers’ favored local projects, which carry added weight in an election year — if the House agrees to lift an obscure state spending cap.

“This would be cash in the bank you can’t use” if the spending limit isn’t raised, Cortez said in an interview Saturday.

Cortez presented his budget bills on Saturday to the finance panel, which approved them unanimously and sent them to the full Senate. Eyes are now on the lower chamber, which must vote on whether to lift the cap before the full Senate advances the budget package, he said. 

Once the Senate approves the budget, it moves to the House, which can either accept or reject the upper chamber’s changes before moving the bills to Gov. John Bel Edwards’ desk. The legislative session ends on Thursday.

The unveiling of the Senate’s budget marked another development in a political battle waged mostly between House conservatives and Senate leadership over the past six weeks. That fight has hinged mostly on how to best plan for the state’s future while spending a $2.2 billion chunk of extra cash wisely.

A bloc of House Republicans want to keep spending below the constitutionally imposed limit on annual appropriations growth. They crafted a package, approved by the House last month, that would have used extra cash to pay down state pension debt. That bucked the wishes of Edwards and Senate leaders who want one-time cash spent on a slate of backlogged infrastructure projects.

Edwards also wanted $296 million in annual recurring money spent on $3,000 raises for K-12 public school teachers plus a $1,500 hike for school support staff. But House lawmakers slashed those provisions, saying the debt payments they proposed would free up cash local schools could use to give raises of their own.

In recent weeks, Cortez has employed political wiles he’s developed over 16 years at the Capitol to quarterback a heavy lift: winning super-majorities in both the House and the Senate to lift the spending limit and spend the unprecedented pile of extra cash on fixing roads, constructing college buildings and restoring Louisiana’s eroding coast.

The two budget documents advanced Saturday — House Bill 1, the main budget bill, and House Bill 560, the supplemental spending measure — reflected those goals, adding back around $284 million in annual recurring dollars to fund $2,000 K-12 teacher raises and $1,000 hikes for school support workers. It also included extra pay bumps that K-12 leaders sought for teachers working in high-need areas, such as special education or science. 

The raises’ fate rests on the House’s final approval of the annual public school funding formula.

The Senate’s budget would also grow funding for a key coastal restoration program, from the $107 million approved by the House to $147 million. It would spend $40 million on grants to homeowners seeking to fortify their roofs against storms, a program touted by lawmakers as way to fix the state’s property insurance woes. And if the House agrees to raise the spending limit, the budget would still pay down roughly $441 million in pension debt, which is less than the House pushed for.

The Senate package would also restore $57 million in higher education funding removed by the House. It leaves unfunded most of the $52 million Edwards requested for early childhood education, allocating only $14 million to that request. The House left that request entirely unfunded. 

Under Cortez’s plan, the House must raise the spending limit if dozens of lawmakers’ favored home-district projects are to be funded. Those include a $200,000 request for a St. John the Baptist Parish drainage initiative, a $75,000 request for the LaBranche Wetland Watchers Park in St. Charles Parish and a $500,000 request for beautification work in Covington, among others.  

Those clauses, plus $311 million in hospital funding that the Senate’s budget only unlocks if the cap is raised, increase political pressure on the House to reach an agreement before the session ends. 

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jerome “Zee” Zeringue, R-Houma, said Saturday he was still reviewing the Senate’s proposal and couldn’t comment on it.

The House Appropriations panel is scheduled to vote Monday on whether to lift the expenditure limit. The measure they will vote on, Senate Resolution 3, would raise that limit by $550 million this year and $1.8 billion next year.

As part of the budget negotiations, the Senate finance panel also passed a measure that would send more money to pay off retirement debt when the state runs a budget surplus.

Cortez has been championing House Bill 47 by Rep. Richard Nelson, R-Mandeville. Nelson’s measure would ask voters in October to amend the constitution to direct 25% of surplus money, up from the current 10%, to paying down the $16 billion in retirement debt. That the bill passed the Finance Committee without dissent Saturday and moves now to the Senate for consideration.