The Texas House’s first official draft of the state budget calls for slashing funding across the board, including for health and human services, public education and higher education, in order to shrink the upcoming budget by $31 billion, or nearly 17 percent, from current levels, without dipping into the state’s emergency reserves or finding new revenue streams. Meanwhile, a group of conservative Republican lawmakers unveiled its own budget proposal that identifies even deeper cuts, including a 27 percent reduction in general revenue funding for education.

House Appropriations chair Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie) presented the first draft of the budget to the House Wednesday morning. The Senate will reveal its own draft of the budget soon. (Budget documents can be found on the Legislative Budget Board’s website.)

The House budget would eliminate nearly 10,000 state positions, and Pitts held open the possibly of furloughs for remaining employees.

Meanwhile, a set of budget proposals by a Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute (TCC) task force, led by state Rep. Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) and Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands) is even harsher on state employees, proposing staff reductions, a hiring freeze, a 10-percent pay cut for all state employees, ending longevity pay, eliminating overtime, forcing furloughs and drastically reducing benefits such as insurance.

The House version of the budget calls for an $8.8 billion reduction in total general revenue spending, or 10.7 percent from 2010-2011. Health and Human Services would take a hit of $1.7 billion (7.8 percent), most of that coming from a 10 percent reduction in Medicaid reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals.

Instead of cutting reimbursement rates, the TCC proposes deferring certain payments to contractors by 30 days, in order to push payments into the next biennium (saving $547 million), and also to expand Medicaid Managed Care (saving $601 million). Among other items, the TCC proposes cutting non-federally required Medicaid programs, such as family planning services, substance abuse prevention, adoption services, foster care services, abstinence education, mental health services and HIV/STD prevention (saving $67 million).

Under the House budget, public education funding would be reduced by $3.1 billion (9.1 percent) — including reducing funding for the Foundation School Program (to be $9.8 billion below formula requirements after accounting for student population growth) and cutting other programs by two-thirds, including teacher incentive pay and pre-K grants, in addition to increasing the maximum student-teacher ratio in elementary schools. Higher education funding would be reduced by $2 billion (15.6 percent) — including cutting general higher ed funds by 10 percent, shutting down four community colleges and reducing funding for the need-based TEXAS Grant program.

Meanwhile, the TCC found $12.7 billion to cut from public and higher ed. An estimated $3.3 billion in general revenue could be saved by eliminating “approximately 80,000 non-teaching staff in total, including coaches, librarians, counselors, nurses and educational aides, as well as campus and central administrators,” according to the report. That’s about one-fourth of all non-teaching staff in state public schools. TCC also proposes a one-month furlough for non-teaching personnel, to save some $438 million.

The TCC proposes cutting TEXAS Grants by 20 percent, and slashing other scholarship/grant programs by 60 percent, including Close the Gaps Loan Program, Engineering Recruitment Program, Texas Armed Services Scholarship Program and Teach for Texas Loan Repayment, among others. The TCC also proposes altogether eliminating the Top Ten Percent Scholarship Program and incentives for potential doctoral students. “Priority must go to other incentive programs such as the Engineering Recruitment Program that have a more practical or vocational application,” according to the report.

The TCC also proposes suspending the Research University Development Fund (to save $50 million) that provides state matching funds for donations toward developing more tier-one research universities in the state.

The House budget calls for reducing public safety and criminal justice spending from general revenue by $1.2 billion (13.5 percent), with a 14 percent reduction in psychiatric and pharmacy care and limiting payments to health care providers for hospital care to Medicaid rates. The budget also calls for closing one state jail and three Texas Youth Commission facilities.

The TCC proposal largely exempts public safety and criminal justice from cuts, saying it’s a “core function” of state government. However, the report does propose “expanding the use of private prisons to all but maximum security inmates,” as well as moving terminally ill and incapacitated prisoners to facilities that would qualify for Medicaid reimbursement.

While the House version of the budget calls for increasing the Texas Enterprise Fund (the business incentive program controlled by Gov. Rick Perry’s office) by $82.3 million (or 119 percent), the TCC proposes eliminating the program altogether, along with music and film subsidies, as well as reducing the Emerging Technology Fund.