"...what would you call sucking up to the education/government employee union establishment...."

I`d call MOST of it fulfilling our constitutional fiduciary obligation to pay for k-12 education.  Contracts expire and they can be renegotiated. Union rancor aside.
Now we need to begin paying taxes like we used to do until 1980,.. because the oil revenues won`t do it anymore.  That`s what this whole exercise is about, but the senate wants to "double down" on the SB21 oil price "crapshoot" as Senator Meyer (Conoco) called it.
The priority for the state is to have stability, and a fiscal plan going forward.. and to stop spending our HARD WON legacy of savings to pay oil loss subsidies.