Eastern Iowa lawmakers have mixed feelings about budget

The third-longest legislative session in Iowa's history ended Thursday, when lawmakers passed a two-year, $6 billion budget.

A stalemate over education, property taxes, and health care threatened to derail negotiations completely. And some Eastern Iowa lawmakers are not completely satisfied.

“For the first time in Iowa's history, we're not having any allowable growth for our schools,” said Rob Hogg, Cedar Rapids Democratic State Senator.

Hogg says with this budget, every category of education is getting hit.  Republicans say they're just cleaning up the financial mess the last administration left behind.

"We have actually put $250 million in new state dollars back into education,” said Nick Wagner, Republican Representative from Marion. “Had it not been underfunded previously, we may have had that allowable growth.”

Eastern Iowa lawmakers left the capitol, but it's clear they're still at odds over what made it in and what failed to pass the budget, like major cuts to property taxes in the state.  GOP leaders pushed hard for a 40 percent reduction in property taxes, hoping to boost business and attract jobs to Iowa.

"It is disappointing,” Wagner said.  “We didn't get it done, but we'll continue to work on it and look at it again next session.”

Negotiations stumbled multiple times over state funding for abortions.  To get a budget passed, many Republicans agreed to keep in place the federal law which allows state-funded abortions in cases of rape, incest and danger to the mother's health, but the social issue will likely come up again.

“We're moving that forward and showing Iowa is serious about reducing the number of abortions in the state,” Wagner said.

As for the decision to pass a two-year budget for the first time since the 1980's, Democrats say they're still skeptical it can work.

"Going out two years makes it difficult to do," Hogg said, "because we really don't know how much money we  have.”