Today @NCCapitol (May 24): Senate hands budget off to the House

On Tuesday House lawmakers will take up a full committee calendar. Senate leaders said Thursday they did not expect committees to meet on Tuesday. 

House Republicans were tepid in their response to the Senate plan Thursday. 

"We look forward to a very strong and productive conference with the Senate," said Rep. Nelson Dollar, R-Wake. Speaking with reporters after session on Thursday, Dollar said that House and Senate leaders shared similar goals, such as education reform, but may not have exactly the same ideas of how to get there.  

Dollar, the senior budget chair in the House, said it would take his colleagues "roughly three weeks" to produce their spending plan.

And as with the Senate, Dollar said the House would not include details of a tax reform plan in the budget bill. Although that will delay some wrangling, tax reform will loom over the budget process. That's because how much money the state has to spend depends on how much it will raise. Thus far, the House and Senate tax reform plans are divided on how much money they raise. 

"There seems to be some discord, some dissonance in there one way or another," observed Rep. Mickey Michaux, D-Durham, who was a budget chairman when Democrats controlled the chamber. He pointed out that the Senate included dozens of policy bills in the budget, larding in items on which the two chambers disagree. 

"Many of the thing things that are in there they disagreed on last year in last year's budget...There's going to be a big fight," Michaux said.