State Leaders Have 3 Weeks To Come To Agreement On $13 Billion State Budget

State leaders gathered Thursday afternoon for their second budget summit - going through all the numbers with News 9’s cameras rolling.

Time is ticking after the end of Thursday’s meeting. Lawmakers only have three weeks to come to an agreement on the $13 billion budget. 

After about an hour of back and forth with no progress, lawmakers started going down the list vetting each appropriation and seeing where they were still disagreeing.

The governor and House are still pushing for some kind of tax cut, either lowering the personal income tax to a flat tax or doing a quarter-point cut.

The Senate made it clear they want to keep at least $1 billion in cash to weather any potential storms. They said for the first time Thursday, that they would take up an additional tax cut if they can keep the cash along with the cut. 

Most of the conversation at this point is still disagreement on that tax cut.

The House and governor say it’s long overdue to give Oklahomans some cash back. While the Senate says they don’t want to tap into recurring funds and put the state in a bad place in the future.

They have to have a budget before May 31, so it can go into effect on June 1.

News 9 will be asking the governor about this budget process - at his weekly press conference Friday morning.