The House and Senate are preparing to enact a Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget, totaling $61.03  billion in line-item spending. The compromise budget includes $443.4 million less in spending than the final House budget and $395.1 million more in spending than the Senate budget, meaning that the Conference Report includes $941.2 million less than Governor Healey’s original spending plan.

Last week, MTF published its first Conference Committee preview for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget, Reconciling Revenue and Spending Differences Between the House and Senate Final Budgets. That brief summarized the spending and policy proposals put forward by each branch, identified shared and unique priorities, and estimated the spending and resource gap that budget writers must solve in order to send a balanced budget to the Governor’s desk. 

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget development process has now entered one of its final stages, Conference negotiations. The Conference Committee, led by the Chairs of the House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means, must reconcile all spending, policy, and technical differences between the budget bills passed by each branch; with the goal of delivering a final spending plan to Governor Healey’s desk by July 1st.

On May 22nd, the Senate finalized its $61.51 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget. Over the course of four days of debate, $81.1 million in new spending was added and 66 outside policy sections were added to their spending plan. 

5 Things to Know:

1. Senate members filed 1,058 amendments, 42 fewer than in FY 2025 and 9 more than in FY 2024.
2. The fiscal impact of all amendments is at least $2.09 billion.*
3. About 59% (624) of the amendments are earmarks.
4. Approximately 41% (434) of the amendments are outside policy sections, support programmatic funding increases, or introduce new line-item language.
5. Between FY 2023 – FY 2025, an average of $88 million in additional spending was added during Senate Debate.

On May 6th, the Senate Ways and Means (SWM) committee released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget proposal, six days after the House finalized its version of the spending bill following three days of debate. Spending in the SWM budget totals $61.42 billion, $3.6 billion (6.3 percent) more than the FY 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), $649 million less than the Governor’s FY 2026 budget, and $151 million less than the House’s proposal. 

On April 31st, the House finalized its $61.58 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget, after adding $81.9 million in spending and 35 outside policy sections over the course of three days of debate. 

The House took action on 1,650 amendments through a combination of seven consolidated amendments and 23 separate votes. Some version of at least 756 amendments were adopted; 715 added new spending and 41 added or amended policy sections or budget language. The majority of adopted amendments (708) added earmarks for specific communities, programs, and projects across the state. 

5 Things to Know:

The House Ways and Means (HWM) committee released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget proposal earlier today; a spending plan that totals $61.5 billion, $3.7 billion (6.4 percent) more than the FY 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) and $580 million (0.9 percent) less than Governor’s Healey’s budget. 

On April 9th, the House of Representatives passed House Bill 55, An Act making appropriations for the fiscal year 2025 to provide for supplementing certain existing appropriations and for certain other activities and projects. The $1.32 billion spending bill is the House version of the Innovation and Capital Fund supplemental budget, and includes $1.26 bil