Public Opinion Notes for Budget Day in the Texas House

April 08, 2025 | By: Jim Henson, Joshua Blank

With the Texas House of Representatives scheduled to debate their budget bills (SB 1 and HB 500, the supplemental appropriations bill) Thursday, April 10, the familiar maneuvering around the budget is well underway, including thick packets of pre-filed amendments for both bills, which were filed Monday as required by the rules passed by the Calendars Committee last week.

The vast majority of the public will not even be the slightest bit aware that the House is taking a major step toward the legislature passing, as the cliche goes, the only bill the legislature is constitutionally required to pass. (After all, very few Texans report following the legislature “extremely closely,” which is what it would take to know the budget is on the docket this week.) But that isn’t to say that they don’t have views, feelings, inclinations even, about how financially committed the state is or is not to different policy areas — however limited the knowledge informing most of those opinions may be.

The December 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll asked Texas voters about their views of the state’s commitment to a dozen spending areas. The idea at the time was to take a reading of voters' attitudes prior to the advent of signaling by political leaders and interest groups. We’ve compiled both a table that accompanied the rollout of the poll as well as more detailed relevant graphics for the responses in December. (See the original rollout post for more detailed comments on the posts.)

Click on the policy area links in the first column of the table to jump down to more detailed resulsts. There are links to the original graphics and complete set of crosstab graphics at the end of each section.

State Spending Assessments
(December 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll)
	Overall			Republicans			Democrats
	Too Much	About the Right Amount	Too Little	Too Much	About the Right Amount	Too Little	Too Much	About the Right Amount	Too Little
Mental Health Services	6	23	58	8	28	49	5	16	70
Healthcare	9	23	55	12	30	42	6	14	73
Electric Infrastructure	8	29	50	9	30	45	6	27	58
K-12 Public Education	10	29	49	14	35	37	5	23	65
Children in the State's Care	7	26	49	9	31	39	5	21	64
Border Security	17	29	45	5	26	63	30	32	27
Water Infrastructure	6	33	44	7	36	38	6	29	53
Environmental Protection	15	31	40	24	41	19	6	21	65
Transportation	9	40	37	13	45	27	7	37	48
Higher Education	20	30	35	30	31	22	7	29	52
Broadband Access	9	36	31	10	40	21	6	33	41
Prisons and the Penal System	19	36	27	14	41	26	22	31	30

Mental Health Services