The Michigan Republican-led House is quarreling with the state’s Democrat-controlled Senate over the budget passed in the upper chamber, which amounts to $1 billion more than Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D-MI) recommendation.
The state Senate passed a $84.5 billion plan last week, which is also $2 billion more than last year’s budget. Republican Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall said he thinks lawmakers can fund important programs while shrinking the budget.
“Senate Democrats didn’t just pass a bad budget — they knowingly passed a budget with a billion-dollar hole in it, that kicks 60,000 Michiganders off Medicaid,” Hall said in a statement. “It’s irresponsible, reckless, and it’s exactly what’s wrong with Lansing.”
Hall told 9and10News that the legislature can fund all critical programs with a smaller budget. “We’re going to actually have a budget that is smaller than the year before, with no deficit, that’s actually going to fund all of these critical programs,” he said.
Republicans took control of the state House after the 2024 elections, putting Hall in charge of the House and splitting control of the legislature between Democrats and Republicans.
Hall said Republicans are taking a wide approach to looking through the budget, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars toward revoked federal infrastructure grants and increased wages for home help providers.
“For the first time, we’re actually going through all of these lines and looking at them and challenging them, and questioning them, and saying, just because they’ve done it this way for 20 years, does it still work? No one does that,” Hall said.
Democratic state Sen. Sarah Anthony, the chairwoman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee, said the Senate has already done that.
“I welcome anyone who wants to think about efficiencies and ways we can be more effective in state government,” she said. “But every single year we do that exercise, we go line by line, program by program, department by department.”
Michigan House Republicans passed a resolution Wednesday calling on the state Senate to fix its “broken” budget. They said the budget has a deficit of $1 billion, which means taxes will have to be raised, and that critical services are underfunded.
Michigan Republicans appear to be heading toward missing the July 1 deadline for an agreed-on budget proposal. If the negotiations go past Oct. 1, the state government will shut down.
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Anthony said state senators are ready to go, but they need the Michigan House to cooperate.
“We’re ready to start negotiating, finding efficiencies, looking at new investments that we can make with the precious dollars we have,” Anthony said. “The only entity that’s missing is the Michigan House of Representatives.”
