Warning they can’t be “paralyzed” by the chaos emanating from Washington, D.C., Massachusetts House leaders released a $61.4 billion state plan budget plan Wednesday that would hike spending by more than 6 percent and funnel millions more to the state’s attorney general as she wages more than a dozen legal battles against the Trump administration.
Top House Democrats said that their proposal is “responsible” in an uncertain environment where the Trump administration has slashed federal dollars and personnel and Congress is weighing potentially heavy cuts to Medicaid.
The spending plan for the fiscal year beginning in July would provide nearly $600 million less in spending than Governor Maura Healey proposed in January and includes no new taxes or increases, shunning a variety of revenue-raising proposals Healey sought.
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Despite the White House’s aggressive moves to slash federal spending, House leaders also said their new budget plan does not build in any direct contingencies for potential cuts to federal aid, which have already come at breakneck speed as Trump implements his second-term agenda. Trump has already sought cuts to school aid and health funding, and Healey’s office on Wednesday said his administration canceled another $90 million in disaster prevention aid for Massachusetts communities from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, the chamber’s budget chief, said the House plan going forward will involve “monitoring how the situation is in Washington [and] being ready to pivot when necessary.”
“We can’t be paralyzed by the situation that’s taking place in Washington,” said Michlewitz, a North End Democrat. “We need to still be moving our budget forward, be aggressive in terms of our support for our constituents, and not get caught up, try to keep blinders on and build the best budget with the information that we have.”
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House Speaker Ron Mariano told reporters that Trump has begun wreaking “havoc” on programs on which residents rely. The Trump administration, for example, is closing the Boston Head Start office, which administers free care to families in need. The House budget includes $18.5 million in Head Start funds.
“Government can be both fiscally responsible and an agent of good,” the Quincy Democrat said.
The House budget included several items that amounted to the chamber’s first meaningful response to the Trump administration so far, nearly three months into his presidency.
Mariano said the House budget would include a “significant increase” in funding — to $82.5 million, a roughly 7 percent increase from last year — for Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office. That amount is $6.8 million more than the $76 million Healey’s January budget would allocate to Campbell, a sum that would be less than what Campbell received for the current fiscal year.
The extra funds are designed “to ensure that AG Campbell can continue to push back against any unconstitutional actions taken by the Trump administration,” Mariano said.
Lawmakers also allocated $5 million to a new immigration legal assistance fund that would be distributed as grants to organizations who assist non-violent offenders. Another $1 million will go to a new gender-affirming care program to community health centers, as the federal government has cut funding to organizations that administer transgender care.
At more than $61 billion, the plan would include a 6.3 percent year-over-year increase in spending, far surpassing the 3 percent spending hike the chamber passed the previous year.
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State budget watchers have warned the state’s economy is already at risk of cooling as a result of Trump’s frenetic pursuit of tariffs, potentially jeopardizing the state’s own revenue base.
But after years of exploding tax collections — and the increased spending it fueled — House budget writers are also juggling billions of dollars in costs the state is already committed to covering, said Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
That includes rising costs in the state Medicaid program known as MassHealth, where the House is budgeting for nearly $2.4 billion in spending, along with commitments to school funding increases.
“Those are the things that are taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room,” said Howgate, adding that lawmakers should avoid making “arbitrary adjustments” in spending before they have a better grasp of the potential economic headwinds. “That doesn’t mean we think people should ignore the broader context about what’s going on.”
Not all agree. Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said the House’s spending plans are “disconnected to the reality that the state’s economy under Trump is slowing and could head into recession within the next year.”
The House spending plan will likely grow later this month when lawmakers add amendments and other earmarks for local projects. The state Senate is expected to release and debate its own budget proposal next month, after which the chambers will have to negotiate the differences.
In several areas, the House departed from Healey’s recommendations. It declined to include a number of new taxes found in the governor’s proposed budget, such as ones on candy sales and prescription drugs. The House also did not include a cap Healey proposed on what taxpayers can claim under a state charitable tax deduction.
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The House allocated $275 million for the state’s emergency shelter system, $50 million less than what Healey’s budget had suggested. It would be far less than the $1 billion the state has committed in total to the program this fiscal year, but, Michlewitz said, reflects the state’s efforts to rein in costs, including instituting a 4,000-family cap starting this December.
The Healey administration said Wednesday fewer than 5,000 families were in the system as of this week, the first time it’s dipped below that level since the summer of 2023.
Unlike Healey, however, the House did not change the Rental Assistance for Families in Transition, or RAFT, program that helps prevent struggling families from being evicted. Healey’s proposal would reduce what a family can receive from its current rate of $7,000 over a 12-month period to $7,000 over 24 months. The House instead elected to keep the program’s funding per family as is.
Lawmakers also pushed back on another Healey administration proposal. The state education department in February proposed to change how vocational schools admit students by using lotteries, rather than ranking students based on criteria such as grades.
The House budget would instead create a 15-member task force to review school policies, with a report due in September 2026, and prohibit education officials from changing admissions regulations until after that report was completed.
The House appeared to embrace, in part, a measure backed by Healey to alleviate Massachusetts’ exorbitant housing costs by ending renter-paid broker fees in some situations, which renters typically pay to secure a home or apartment. Tenants would be responsible for broker fees under certain circumstances, according to the House proposal, including if they “initiated contact” with a broker, such as responding to an ad or listing — a fairly common practice in apartment hunting around greater Boston.
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The language appears to be weaker than a measure Healey included in her own budget requiring the party that hires a broker, usually the landlord, to pay for brokers’ fees, after she said they “should be abolished” in January. The Senate included a similar change aiming to get rid of tenant-paid broker fees in its version of a sweeping housing bill last year, but it failed to make it into the final version of the law passed last July.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout. Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.