- Michigan House Republicans unveil and quickly approve the bulk of a $78.5 billion budget proposal.
- Plan would cut spending for most state departments, eliminate thousands of government jobs and ban DEI initiatives
- The proposed cuts would help pay for a $3 billion increase in road funding, along with $99 million in earmarks and $50 million for a UP copper mine
LANSING — Michigan House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled and promptly approved a $54.6 billion spending plan as part of a $78.5 billion budget proposal, the latest development in a partisan standoff that could force a government shutdown in five weeks.
The House GOP plan would broadly slash state government funding, cutting thousands of state government jobs and eliminating a bevy of programs, in part to boost state and local road spending by more than $3 billion next year.
The emergence of the House budget – unveiled nearly two months after lawmakers missed a statutory July 1 deadline to finalize a spending plan — illustrates an ongoing gulf with the Democratic-led Senate.
It proposes roughly $6 billion less in spending than the Senate, a difference that will have to be bridged in a little more than a month before an Oct. 1 deadline mandated by the Michigan Constitution.
Without a budget signed into law by then, much of Michigan’s government would be forced to shut down.
“We’re not budging as much as (Democrats are) going to have to budge if they want to get a budget done,” Rep. Ann Bollin, the Republican House appropriations chair from Brighton, said after the vote, challenging Democrats “to come to the table.”
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Democrats panned the proposal, which would also cut 55% of funding from the independent Department of Civil Rights’ budget, about 30% from Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office and 24% from Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
It would also cut funding for Michigan State Police by $66 million, including elimination of $12 million and 39 full-time positions in the department’s professional development bureau.
“I want to believe that together, working side by side, we can accomplish the big things that we are all elected here to do,” said state Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, who served as vice chair of the budget committee until Hall removed him from that post last month amid a dispute.
“However, when I look at this document that we got about an hour ago, I could only see how much further we are allowing our state to slide back into a position of mediocrity instead of leading again.”
Whitmer, legislative leaders meet
Earlier Tuesday, Republican House Speaker Matt Hall met with his Democratic counterparts, Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, at Whitmer’s official residence in Lansing.
A little more than an hour after that scheduled meeting, Hall posted on social media that Democrats had “NO MORE EXCUSES” to not pass a plan to bolster road funding. The House has proposed increasing road funding by $3 billion, funded in part by gutting Whitmer’s signature economic development initiatives.
Republicans asserted their proposed budget would cut “$5 billion of waste, fraud and abuse” but did not provide a list of the spending reductions they described.
The budget would eliminate thousands of full-time state government jobs, including 775 jobs in the Department of Corrections, which has struggled with staffing shortages.
But many of those are unfilled jobs that exist only on paper, according to Bollin, who said the House spending plan would eliminate 4,200 “phantom employees” to free up half a billion dollars.
It wasn’t immediately clear what impact that might have on state departments.
House Republicans unveiled and passed the budget without allowing much prior review by the minority, though Rep. Timmy Beson, a Republican from Bay City on the budget committee, said the majority caucus had reviewed it last Thursday.
House Republicans said their plan would also incorporate the kind of tax exemptions on tips and overtime implemented at the federal level under President Donald Trump.
One Democrat — state Rep. Karen Whitsett of Detroit — joined Republicans in voting for the plan. Whitsett has increasingly sided with Republicans and no longer caucuses with Democratic colleagues.
More money for roads
Roads would be a big winner in the House GOP plan, which proposes $3.4 billion in additional funding for the Michigan Department of Transportation. That assumes final passage of related legislation, including a bill to replace the sales tax on fuel with an equivalent hike in gas taxes to direct more money to roads.
The plan would send an additional $933 million to municipal road agencies next year, along with another $1.3 billion to county road commissions.
And it does so “without raising taxes,” Bollin said. “That means our communities finally get the resources they need to repair the potholes and crumbling roads our families drive on every day.”
Business incentives and earmarks
The House budget would end funding for the governor’s signature SOAR business incentive program and eliminate all funding — $100 million last year — for Business Attraction and Community Revitalization grants.
But it would include $50 million for Wakefield Township to make infrastructure improvements for a controversial Upper Peninsula copper mine, whose owners had sought a SOAR incentive.
The House GOP process included new transparency rules for legislative earmarks but the budget does not eliminate that spending entirely.
The plan includes $99.9 million in earmarks, including $10 million for Wayne County West Road Bridge replacement in Trenton, $5 million for Lake Mitchell Sewer Authority infrastructure repairs, $3.3 million for Sheridan Township bridge repairs and $1 million for a Shelby Township community pool.
Republicans said their process reduced the volume of earmarks in the final budget by more than $1.2 billion as compared to last year. Senate Democrats have not followed the House’s new rules, and Hall has vowed not to include earmark requests that haven’t, creating another lingering aspect to the standoff.
Bollin said the Senate’s budget had about “$1 billion of earmarks that have been undisclosed” but didn’t offer any insight about how those spending items would be handled in negotiations.
Health cuts
The Michigan Health and Hospital Association panned the House GOP budget, saying it “guts hospital funding and would be disastrous if even a semblance of the cuts eventually makes it into the state budget.”
The plan would cut nearly $4 billion from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, including a $100 million reduction to food assistance benefits that were cut under President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The proposal would cut another $333.5 million in food assistance funding to match the state’s recorded payment error rate of 9.5% according to the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency.
It would also make various reductions in Medicaid spending, including a $21 million cut for adult dental service coverage.
Farhat noted the plan would also cut more than $20 million for the MiDOCS program, which provides tuition loan relief for physicians that work in underserved and impoverished communities.
“I have to wonder, who are we defending in this budget?” Farhat said.
Culture wars
Like earlier House education budgets, the new general government spending plan proposed by Republicans takes aim at several culture war issues.
Among other things, the plan would prohibit state departments from spending any money on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives or programs, as defined in executive orders by President Donald Trump.
It would also prohibit the Michigan Department of Corrections from spending any money on “costs associated with gender reassignment surgery for any prisoner of this state.”
Education budgets approved by House Republicans in June would penalize schools for maintaining diversity initiatives, allowing transgender girls to play girls sports or having unisex bathrooms for LGBTQ students.
What’s next
Senate Democrats have, for weeks, called on House Republicans to produce and pass a budget so the two sides could begin to negotiate.
House Republicans, in turn, have called out Senate Democrats for not passing a road funding plan — something Whitmer has said she wants to see passed alongside a budget.
Hall renewed his calls at a press conference after the budget vote, saying “let’s see the Democrats’ roads plan.”
Brinks, for her part, preempted the House’s budget vote with a statement emphasizing her “disappointments and frustrations” with the process.
“We have a lot of work to do. It’s work that we can accomplish, but the games and distractions need to end,” she said after meeting with Hall and Whitmer.
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