BOSTON (State House News Service) – Top House Democrats think newly available money from a tax on the state’s highest earners should be used to make school meals free for all students, invest in clean energy updates to aging schools and fix crumbling infrastructure on the MBTA.

A quarter of the projected $1 billion that the state expects to bring in from the voter-approved surtax on Massachusetts residents who make over $1 million in a year would go toward MBTA capital investments in the House Ways and Means Committee budget plan that was being rolled out Wednesday afternoon.

House leadership’s budget bill would dedicate $70 million more to MBTA infrastructure than Gov. Maura Healey proposed in March. Like Healey’s budget, the committee recommends creating a separate fund for surtax revenue called the Education and Transportation Fund. Money in this fund would be constitutionally required to be spent on education and transportation initiatives.

House Ways and Means Chair Aaron Michlewitz told reporters that 100 percent of the surtax funds in the committee’s plan would supplement existing budget allocations, rather than replacing some current spending to free up other spending space in the budget. Michlewitz and other House leaders proposed splitting the $1 billion 50/50 into education and transportation investments.

On the education side, they recommend $161 million toward universal free school meals — something that legislative leaders and Healey have identified as a priority — though the House diverges from Healey’s budget by funding the program through surtax funds. The House plan to make this program permanent and funded through the surtax would dedicate about 16 percent of the estimated $1 billion expected in revenue this year to free school meals for all students in the state.

The House is also proposing a new Green School Works grant program run by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for public schools to apply for projects related to clean energy infrastructure, a $100 million program in their recommended budget.

Carving out $261 million to these two programs cuts out some education programs that Healey included in her surtax investment plan. The House did not include Healey’s recommended $59 million to keep tuition the same for all four years of students’ undergraduate education at state-funded universities, nor does it include $140 million for capital projects at higher education institutions.