The Republican-led Michigan House voted Wednesday to ask the Democratic-led state Senate to take back the budget proposal that it passed last week.
After the Senate passed that plan, new revenue estimates came down suggesting the Senate plan would be around $1 billion over budget.
Representative Matt Maddock (R-Milford) is House Appropriations Committee vice chair. He said it’s against the state constitution to spend more than the state has.
“We cannot ignore rules. Nor can they. Instead of making cuts that exist in our budget — we all know it’s there. We all know there’s fraud, waste, abuse in our budget — Instead of just cutting $1, they refuse to do that,” Maddock said.
The Senate proposal came out to a little under $85 billion. The current state budget totals around $82.5 billion.
Democrats, however, are defending the cost of the plan.
Senate Appropriations Chair Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) emphasized the budget bills were based on revenue estimates from January that had predicted the state would see a surplus. Those numbers were revised downward on Friday.
Anthony said both chambers, and the governor’s office, typically base their first budget proposals on those January numbers. Generally, each chamber zeroes out the other’s proposal once those numbers are out and negotiations begin in earnest once the three sides set spending targets with the May numbers in mind.
Anthony said House Republicans haven’t offered anything serious ahead of a planned break next week for an event on Mackinac Island.
“To go up to an island and to party amongst the lobbyists and the ultra-wealthy feels very irresponsible in a time in which people are looking at what’s happening at the federal level, the threats to their health care," Anthony said, referring to a congressional GOP budget plan that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts would result in millions of people losing health insurance. "Instead of staying here and doing the job, they’d rather do political stunts.”
House Republicans have passed a stop-gap spending measure they say would help keep schools and some of the state’s agencies running, should budget talks stretch past a July 1 statutory deadline.
