Hi! You're reading the It's Just Politics newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the It's Just Politics podcast for all the political news you need each week.
This week in political jujitsu: With just a few hours advance notice on Thursday, Michigan House Republicans called a vote on a resolution to temporarily put a hold on paychecks for lawmakers and the governor when budget standoffs drag past the July 1 deadline set in state law.
This was Republican House Speaker Matt Hall’s answer to the existing impasse: a resolution to amend the Michigan Constitution to deal with future budget standoffs.
“They have to have skin in the game in order to get the budget done. This will force the politicians to have the urgency to do it instead of jerking everyone around for months and months and months and walking away, like the Democrats did,” he said Thursday following the (predictable) failure to get the two-thirds supermajority necessary to send the resolution to the Michigan Senate and, perhaps, the 2026 ballot.
Would it change the current budget standoff that’s already put schools, community colleges and public universities behind the eight ball? Not a whit. (Which the Speaker acknowledges.)
Would it change the fact that the Legislature’s rolling toward missing the October 1 deadline that would shut down nonessential state departments and agencies? Not at all.
The Republican-sponsored resolution would have let voters amend the Michigan Constitution to put a hold on paychecks once a budget is stalled past the July 1 deadline. That deadline was adopted in an anemic effort to thwart budget deadlocks. “Anemic” because there are no consequences for lawmakers and governors who miss that deadline.
And that’s a problem.
But this was not a serious effort to fix that problem.
How do we know that? A serious effort would have worked with the existing mechanisms to fine tune legislation and reach something close to a consensus. Which is necessary when accomplishing your goal requires bipartisan majorities and voter approval.
House Joint Resolution M was dropped in the hopper Thursday morning to be voted on just hours later without a single committee hearing, opportunities for interest groups and regular citizens to weigh in, and the chance to learn more about what might not be apparent at first blush. (All those trappings that force the deliberations that make republican democracies and the legislative process work.)
And there was no urgency to this amendment. This resolution would not light a fire to get the process rolling since it would be irrelevant in the current process. The question would have had to go on the ballot next year for voter approval. It would make a difference in the budget process that starts in 2027 at the earliest.
A serious effort to fix this year’s budget quagmire would be for the GOP-controlled House and the Democrat-led Senate to adopt their own versions of the two main budget bills and get them to conference committees (it’s in the rules) to do the hard work of forging a compromise.
The system isn’t broken. The system is being ignored.
This was a messaging moment. And the message wasn’t let’s fix this problem.
______________________
Have questions about Michigan politics? Or, just want to let us know what you want more of (less of?) in the newsletter? We always want to hear from you! Shoot us an email at politics@michiganpublic.org!
_______________________
-
A live, onstage conversation with Pete Buttigieg, former South Bend mayor, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and current Michigan resident. The former Democratic presidential candidate discusses the deep divisions in American society, the future of the Democratic Party, and the enormous - and not necessarily comprehensible - impact of artificial intelligence. Plus, his political future.
_______________________
What we’re talking about at the dinner table
Duggan debrief: Speaker Matt Hall credits Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan for the idea of delaying pay if there’s no budget. Speaking of the independent candidate for governor, Duggan made his debut appearance on WKAR’s Off the Record earlier this morning. This week’s show – a longtime staple of Michigan politics – hasn’t dropped yet, but Zoe (who was one of the panelists) says the conversation ranged from Duggan’s take on the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (he thinks it’s not working) to his thinking on a lieutenant governor pick (he says a number of surprising folks have already called him expressing interest in the job). Duggan made clear he thinks the budget stalemate in Lansing is just another example of broken politics at the Capitol and the need for an independent governor who is not formally aligned with either political party. You can watch the full episode after it drops later this afternoon here.
En garde: House Democrats also used legislation this week to send a political message with the introduction of a bill to ban out-of-state National Guard troops from entering Michigan without the governor’s permission or valid orders from the president, the Michigan Public Radio Network’s Colin Jackson reports. That requirement is already a part of federal law. But the Trump administration’s use of troops in Washington, D.C. and previously in California is alarming Democratic lawmakers and civil rights advocates who fear Michigan could be next. State Representative Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia) says the prospect of using soldiers to patrol cities is “deeply concerning.” She doesn't think the bill would stop what she sees as an illegal use of military force. But she says having the ban in state law would give opponents a path to fight an order in Michigan courts. This is a “messaging” bill because getting that ban to Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s desk is highly unlikely given it almost certainly won’t receive so much as a committee hearing in the GOP-controlled House.
Mayor Pete: On this week’s It’s Just Politics podcast, we dug into issues ranging from the future of the Democratic Party to the future of AI with former Democratic presidential candidate (and now-Michigan resident) Pete Buttigieg. We asked him whether he’s considering running again for higher office: “Of course you think about it. And you read polls and you talk to friends and people stop you on the street, and you think about it… I thought really hard about running here in Michigan twice earlier this year. And, you know, thinking about it is different from deciding you're going to do it… I'm also old enough to know that running for office is not something you do unless you're really sure that it needs to be you, and it needs to be now.” We also discussed Supreme Court reform, the impact of partisan media, and the reimagining of democratic institutions. Take a listen to the extended conversation recorded live, onstage as part of this month’s Issues & Ale.
Yours in political nerdiness (we’re off next week but back in your inboxes after Labor Day),
Rick Pluta & Zoe Clark
Co-hosts, It’s Just Politics
