Published April 30, 2026 at 4:00 PM CDT

With just a little more than two weeks left in the 2026 legislative session, the Missouri General Assembly still has a lot on its plate.

The biggest thing the legislature does each year is a approve a budget, and their deadline is May 8.

So far, the House and Senate have approved two different versions of the budget, with the House's proposal costing the state $50 billion and the Senate's coming in at just over $48.8 billion. The former would have resulted in a complete overhaul of how state higher education is funded, with the money being allocated to universities based on enrollment.

But, the Senate shot it down.

"That would have been good news for some schools like Missouri State in Springfield. It would have been very bad news for some schools like Truman State or Lincoln University in Jeff City," KCUR senior news analyst Brian Ellison told Up To Date.

"Several senators had almost sort of an 'over their dead body' approach to that proposal, and they restored the original formulas in their version of the budget," Ellison continued.

Ellison told Up To Date that both budget proposals don't just fund themselves with new tax revenues — they would also pull from cash reserves.

"I think the question is, what happens if you draw down almost all of those reserves, especially at a time when we're talking about further decreasing revenues with elimination of the income tax or whatever property tax proposals move forward. What we might be looking at is a real situation a couple years down the road where Missouri just doesn't have any extra money."

• Brian Ellison, KCUR senior news analyst