The Iowa Senate is planning for a break-even budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

State Senator Ken Rozenboom says even though they are planning for level spending, it will actually lead to new money in the system after key one-time expenditures last session.

“The reason we can do that is that in last year’s budget there were two big budget items that were one-time events–one is the Medicaid funding of around $144 million, and the other was $113 million that went to refill the reserve funds we had drawn on the year before.”

Rozenboom says both the Iowa House and Governor’s proposal come in with modest growth for the coming fiscal year, so he anticipates the final total to come between the Senate’s $7.62 billion and the House’s $7.67 billion, which would leave an end balance between $200 to $300 million based on Legislative Services Agency projections. Hear more about the latest from the Iowa Statehouse on today’s Let’s Talk Pella.