Facing an Oct. 1 deadline to get a budget in place, Democratic House Speaker Andy Dillon is talking about adopting all $1.2 billion in cuts that Senate Republicans passed in June.
In return, the Republican Senate majority might agree after Oct. 1 to put money back into the budget for some programs important to Democrats, who want to to keep a college scholarship program and money for early childhood development and local police and firefighters.
In return, they "might" agree? That's the bargain here? That's the bipartisan compromise? Do everything the Republicans want, and they "might" put back important programs?
Yeah, right. Wow, sure glad we got out and voted for the House Democrats in such great numbers last fall, huh? If we would have known that they were just going to roll over for everything the Republicans wanted, probably could have just skipped that section of the ballot.
The AP reminds us just who takes the hit if we follow this path.
Many of the cuts would fall on the poor and disabled, but plenty of citizens also could find they're getting less police and fire protection or job training and less money for schools.
The real sad thing here is, the Senate Republicans have indicated that they were willing to look at revenues, especially tax exemptions. Read this previous diary and the comments within for more details - but we will pick one from the end of July to highlight. As reports of declining revenue came in, Republicans were admitting the need to look at other options.
The memo, which was dated Monday but posted to the SFA website on Wednesday, also came out when various sources acknowledged that Republican lawmakers were reluctantly looking at the possibility that additional revenues, most likely by reducing tax credits, were going to have to be part of the budget solution.
This didn't have to happen. We were going to have to make some big cuts, that is true, but we could have lessened their severity and even saved the Michigan Promise scholarship. Now, who knows what will happen, but given the fact that Republicans are running on how "bad" things are in Michigan, it's very unlikely they will do anything to put back "programs important to Democrats". And even if they do, they sure are going to use it in campaigns - how they "saved" the scholarships and K-12 funds and cops that those "Democrats wanted to cut". Not only are we rolling over for an all Republican budget, we are handing them campaign talking points as well.
So, all those groups that came to Lansing to protest these "draconian" cuts? Send your cards and letters to:
Michigan House Democrats
P.O. Box 30014
Lansing, MI 48909-7514
Or contact your Representative here. Let them know what you think.
UPDATE: KBH has a list of the GOP cuts here.