For the first time since the 1970s, the Wyoming legislature failed to pass a supplemental budget bill in the non-budget session year. Let’s consider why the state Senate chose not to capitulate to the Freedom Caucus-driven House, and pass a supplemental budget.
Based on my observations of the legislature over the past 20 years or so, it seems the failure of the supplemental budget falls into two categories – political and practical.
This looks political: the Freedom Caucus, which controls the state House, tried to pressure the Senate into capitulating to its desires.
The House started behind the eight-ball in management of the session. All members of the House appropriations committee, except the lone Democrat, were new to the committee.
Nine of the 10 committee chairs were new.
The House Speaker had fewer than six years’ experience in the legislature. The Majority Leader and Speaker Pro Tempore have never served in leadership before, and only have four years of legislative experience.
None of the House leadership had ever served on a budget conference committee.
The House membership that had, in the past, served on budget conference committees were relegated to the less-impactful Transportation Committee, where their expertise in developing a budget strategy was frittered away.
Negotiating a budget with the Senate takes strategy and planning. House leadership made tactical decisions which hurt their budgeting efforts.
After the session began, mailers, videos and emails from organizations friendly to the Freedom Caucus started pressuring the Senate. They asked the Senate to bow to group’s will and pass all of the bills on the Freedom Caucus agenda.
The Senate did not react well to pressure from mysterious puppet masters. When dealing with the budget the upper chamber instead coalesced into a cohesive body. Leadership agreed to kill the budget, and no one on the Senate floor made a move to overrule Leadership.
A few senators aligned with the Freedom Caucus wailed and gnashed their teeth, but other than the predictable moaning, no substantive action followed.
As a rule, senators began to distrust the Freedom Caucus.
These results were predictable, but the inexperience and arrogance of the House who thought they could bully the Senate worked against them in the end. Having wasted their most precious legislative commodity – trust – the House had little leverage to request the budget be passed.
So the House failed, politically, to get the Senate to pass the supplemental budget with the House’s high-dollar spending.
Practical reasons also formed the basis of the budget’s failure.
Remember, the 2024 legislature passed the largest budget in the history of the state. The Freedom Caucus campaigned on outrage toward the budget’s largesse, claiming when they arrived in Cheyenne, there would be a new sheriff in town, and that sheriff would police the budget with a tight dragnet.
Then in 2025, the new sheriff arrived in town. The Freedom Caucus-driven house proposed supplementing the largest budget in Wyoming history by an additional $1 billion dollars and change.
The Senate took a more measured approach.
It passed separate bills that funded the immediate needs – the external cost adjustment for public education, replenishing and supplementing the emergency fire funds and fully funding the property tax refund program – all of which passed.
The Senate’s more measured approach obviated the need for the supplemental budget full of the House’s pork. So the House, with its billion-plus dollars in spending, including backfill for its property tax cuts, found itself out in the cold.
The backfill was a non-starter for the Senate. Their position was, if the legislature is going to give tax cuts to taxpayers, the agencies funded by the taxes should tighten their belts.
The House’s position was, we’ll just spend our savings and postpone the consequences of the tax cuts until we are reelected or out of savings – whichever comes first.
House Appropriations Committee Chair John Bear found himself caught completely off guard, mumbling, “But . . . but . . . but . . . we’re supposed to be the most conservative body in the history of the world.”
In actuality, the House driven by the Freedom Caucus turned out to be the big spenders, and the Senate, the most conservative body in Wyoming politics. Immediate needs were addressed; House pork eliminated.
It will be interesting to see how the Freedom Caucus spins their largesse to its supporters when the truth surfaces: the House is where we find the big-government big-spenders.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 - 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
