Yesterday the state budget bill passed the House and the federal budget resolution was approved by both the U.S. House and Senate. It's almost budget overload for those of us who work on both. An interesting fun fact: the same number of Ohio House Members and U.S. Senators voted for their respective budgets.

After passing along party lines with a vote of 53-45, the $56 billion state biennial budget bill now moves to the Senate. The Plain Dealer had a nice summary of the provisions.

Switching to the federal side, the vote was largely along party lines, (233-193 in the House and (53-43 in the Senate) with a few Democrats in both houses jumping ship and voting "no". Today's coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times of the $3.5 trillion total package is worth a read.

But the worst is not yet over - Congress will take up its 9 appropriations bills to set levels of funding for specific programs very shortly, and the Budget Resolution requires them to consider legislation on health care and higher education funding. And at the state level, we expect that conference committee will be busy as the bill coming out of the Senate will likely be quite different from that just passed by the House.