Congratulations, It's a Biennial Budget

Amid the hubbub, you may have missed that the Budget Conference Committee voted out their final draft (collapsing economy and potential American Recovery and Reconstruction Act compliance issues not withstanding) of the 2010-11 state budget Tuesday morning.

At this point, no-one has really had time to wade through all its terms, but here's the headline: The new budget is $182 billion (or $182,309 million, if you prefer) – higher than either the House or Senate drafts.

It's been noted that neither Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden nor House Appropriations Chair Jim Pitts has been on the floor much of last week: They were busy folding riders in and adding contingency appropriations. There will be some tea-leaf reading over the next few days over what exactly happened with money for the governor's office. Moving mansion reconstruction and film incentives to general revenue and spending the original federal stimulus cash on textbooks may just be an ARRA compliance: But there are changes to restrictions on how the governor's office can transfer funds between the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Emerging Tech Fund.

Article-by-article breakdown after the fold, showing how much more (+) and less (-) than either chamber's draft is in the final numbers.

Article I – General Government $4.1 billion (Senate -$306 million, House +$178 million)

Article II – Health & Human Services $59.6 billion (Senate -$776 million, House +$1.386 billion)

Article III – Education $75.4 billion (Senate +$657 million, House +$883 million)

Article IV – Judiciary: $669 million (Senate -$3 million, House +$2 million)

Article V –Public Safety and Criminal Justice: $10.8 billion (Senate -$83 million, House +$177 million)

Article VI – Natural Resources: $3.4 billion (Senate -$144 million, House -$73 million)

Article VII – Business and Economic Development: $20.7 billion (Senate +$52 million, House +$2 billion)

Article VII – Regulatory: $892 million (Senate -$40 million, House +$23 million)

Article IX – General Provisions: $666 million (Senate +$537 million, House +$108 million)

Article X – The Legislature $354 million (Senate -$1 million, House +$0)

Article XII – ARRA $5.7 billion (Senate +$213 million, House +$159 million)

Total: $182,309.3 million (Senate +$843 million, House +$4.9 billion)