IT SOUNDS LIKE a simple enough pitch – the best way to ensure a sustainable revenue picture is to boost the economic prospects of Massachusetts residents and companies. By the Senate’s math, it also calls for a “starve the beast” political strategy aimed at the money-strapped MBTA and ballooning shelter expenses. 

While waving off the question of new tax streams for another time, Senate leadership is touting its proposed budget as first and foremost an “education budget” that takes a meaningful swing at the underlying barriers to full participation in the workforce and educational attainment. 

“If we grow our economy, that is the best way to grow our revenue,” Senate President Karen Spilka said on The Codcast. “By allowing our students to go to community college, get degrees, and get better jobs, they’ll earn more, they’ll be happier, their families will earn more, they’ll be paying more taxes.” 

Sen. Michael Rodrigues, chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means. and his House counterpart – Ways and Means chair Rep. Aaron Michlewitz – were the key, often lone, negotiators on last cycle’s closeout budget, which dragged late into the year and required legislators to convene a special session during their holiday break to overcome Republican resistance to passing the bill at an informal session. On The Codcast, Rodrigues and Spilka offered a rosy view of the inter-chamber negotiations as the Senate prepares to consider and debate about 1,100 amendments.

“We know the dance,” Rodrigues said of his dealings with Michlewitz. “We know each other very well. We work well with each other. The House passed a very responsible, balanced budget that reflects the priorities of its members. We, in the Senate, will pass an equally responsible and balanced budget that represents the priorities of the Senate members. And we’ll sit down and we’ll have conversations and we’ll work it out together. I’m very confident that there will be no differences between both budgets that we cannot reach compromise on, get consensus, and get it to the governor’s desk as soon as possible.”

Some Senate and House splits have a Groundhog Day feel. The governor and the House have, once again, included budget provisions that would allow the state Lottery to expand its offerings online. 

Yet, “it hasn’t been a priority of the senators since I’ve been Senate president and Ways and Means chair,” Spilka noted. She pointed to testimony from the Lottery that any new revenue from an online product would take at least 14 months to appear, but also expressed a moral qualm about the product.

“There are folks though that also say that it will increase addiction to the lottery and increase costs both for the state and for families,” she said. “More families will experience financial issues because of that. So it, again, like anything else, is a balance.”

More so than the House, the Senate is again leaning in on regional transit authorities and offering hundreds of millions of dollars less than the House on MBTA funding.  

“To some extent, yes, there’s a tension and to some extent there’s not,” Spilka said of the RTA and MBTA balance. The Senate is proposing more MBTA funding than the governor’s budget, she noted. 

“So many other areas of our state rely upon RTAs,” she said. “And for many years they were underfunded. I know many of them do not have night service, do not have connectivity – so if you live and work in one RTA, there’s no way to even connect to another, or to eventually get into the Boston area if you want, or to go west. Those connections are crucial for people who need them for work.”

Rodrigues, who described the MBTA’s operating budget appetite as “insatiable” earlier this month, said there is already a substantial amount of money directed toward the system through the sales tax, and “we need to continue to invest in other parts of the state.” 

A future supplemental budget may be needed to close the gap between the Senate’s proposed shelter funding and the $900 million that the governor estimates will be needed for the system in the next year. While banking on action from the federal government, and noting “the ink is barely dry” on a recent supplemental budget, Rodrigues said legislators are hoping that the Healey administration will work to streamline food and shelter costs to avoid additional bloat.

“It’s incumbent upon the administration to make those procurements as effective and efficient as possible,” Rodrigues said. “And if this $325 million is not sufficient, then they will file a supplemental budget and they will come to us and have a conversation with us again about the need for more money.”

While noting that about 60 percent of the state’s revenues are derived from income taxes, the Senate leaders indicated little interest in pursuing new taxes in the context of the current budget. Gov. Maura Healey’s housing bond bill supports allowing municipalities to enact a real estate transfer tax, and the governor put forward a bill in January that would allow cities and towns to raise some local meal and lodging taxes.

“There’s been no discussion of local option revenue taxes, whether it’s transfer of fees or increased taxes on meals or lodging on communities,” Rodrigues said. “That was not discussed in terms of the operating budget.” Legislators will consider the governor’s bill “when the time comes,” he said. 

“Taxes are not on the table at this point,” Spilka added.