House budget defunds the Texas Lottery Commission.

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports the budget for the Texas Lottery Commission, which brings about $2 billion a year to the state treasury, has been reduced to zero in the 2026-27 spending plan the Texas House approved last week. And the chamber on Tuesday signaled it was serious about ending the 34-year-old agency. The decision to defund the lottery, which for the much of this year has been a magnet for criticism in the Legislature on multiple fronts, was seen as legislative gamesmanship when the House in the wee hours of Friday morning passed its version of the state budget. That’s because several amendments were filed by some House Republicans that would have tapped into the lottery’s budget to fund other projects. Rather than opening the door to potentially protracted debates on those projects, budget managers quietly cut the lottery’s funding and transferred it to a special fund that is managed by the governor’s office, which was also eyed as a funding source for some members.

Therefore, any amendments targeting the lottery funds were moot and not acted upon. State Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, who was among the House members who had sought to tap the lottery funds, told the American-Statesman on Tuesday that House budget leaders had acted with a heavy hand. “It was the uni-party,” said Little, who is among a cadre of conservative lawmakers who have said that the Democratic members, who are outnumbered in the House, have outsized influence in the GOP-dominated chamber. “Republicans and Democrats were working together to shut down conservative government.” But before Little’s comment, the House appeared to double-down on its decision to defund the lottery. Because the House’s budget differs from the one the Senate has passed, the competing versions will have to be reconciled by a conference committee. The House, by an 89-57 vote, largely along party lines, instructed its conference committee members to keep the lottery stripped of its funding. On Friday, state Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur, asked the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Republican Gregg Bonnen of Angleton, if he would commit to keeping the lottery’s budget at zero during the upcoming House-Senate haggling. Bonnen, however, was noncommittal.