{"id":361861,"date":"2026-06-15T21:08:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T21:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/361861\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T21:08:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T21:08:05","slug":"house-speaker-threatens-budget-over-impasse-with-senate-dems-the-oakland-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/361861\/","title":{"rendered":"House speaker threatens budget over impasse with Senate Dems \u2013 The Oakland Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by BridgeMichigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Sign up for a free BridgeMichigan newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By Simon D. Schuster, Bridge Michigan<\/p>\n

LANSING \u2014 GOP House Speaker Matt Hall is threatening to hold up Michigan\u2019s state budget unless Democrats in the state Senate start passing some of his caucus\u2019 priorities, raising the specter of the second straight year of protracted budget negotiations.<\/p>\n

Hall\u2019s priorities are far from Democrat\u2019s interests: They include broad property tax cuts, repealing loosened childhood literacy requirements and slashing anti-poverty programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t see movement from the Democrats on some of these issues, then we could just do a four-month continuing resolution, and we\u2019ll do a new deal next year with a Republican governor and maybe a Republican Senate,\u201d Hall said, confident that Republicans will expand their control of the Legislature and win Michigan\u2019s top office in the November midterm election.<\/p>\n

But with Republicans controlling the state House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, state budgets have to be a product of bipartisan compromise before they can reach Gov. Gretchen Whitmer\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n

That process was prolonged and painful in 2025, as lawmakers blew through multiple deadlines and were forced to pass stopgap funding legislation to prevent a state government shutdown, before a budget was finalized and signed into law on Oct. 5.<\/p>\n

This time Hall\u2019s floated stopgap would fund the government until a new government and legislature are sworn into office, though this would require the support of Senate Democrats. If Democrats win control of the legislature, however, the GOP advantage for the tactic would evaporate.<\/p>\n

Unlike last year, when House Republicans did not pass a budget until late August, both the\u00a0House<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Senate\u00a0<\/a>passed fiscal year 2027 funding bills more than a month ago. All that\u2019s left now is to reconcile the two and negotiate a compromise that can pass both chambers.<\/p>\n

Senate Democrats are committed to hitting the July 1 deadline, said Rose Jones, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, and put the onus on the House. Brinks and Hall have had a chilly rapport throughout the legislative term.<\/p>\n

\"MichiganMichigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, and GOP House Speaker Matt Hall have had a chilly rapport throughout the legislative term. (MNG file photo)<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of good work has been done to this point, and one would hope that the House does the responsible thing,\u201d Jones said in a statement.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not clear how close the chamber may be to a deal. While Michigan\u2019s fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the state\u2019s public schools could feel the impact of another prolonged negotiation well before that.<\/p>\n

Uncertainty and hope<\/p>\n

Schools have had a July 1 budget deadline\u00a0under state law\u00a0since 2019, meaning they\u2019re again staring down the prospect of planning for another year without knowing exactly how much funding they\u2019ll receive. Though each chamber\u2019s funding proposals aren\u2019t as far apart as in 2025 for schools, some major differences remain.<\/p>\n

Robert McCann, of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, said months of funding uncertainty would \u201cagain would be an unmitigated disaster\u201d for many districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to see districts that are leaving a wide variety of positions unfilled, you\u2019re going to see pink slips go out the door, you\u2019re going to see programs get paused or put on indefinite hold, if not outright canceled,\u201d McCann said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Despite the uncertainty, McCann said he remains hopeful a budget can still be completed on time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be very doable, but they\u2019re choosing not to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After years of surpluses, Michigan is facing slower revenue growth than in years past, and federal policy changes from the administration of President Donald Trump mean Michigan will have to shift hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid funding cuts.<\/p>\n

Whitmer had proposed about\u00a0$800 million<\/a> in new taxes\u00a0on nicotine products, online betting and internet ads to stabilize looming cuts to Medicaid funding. That didn\u2019t make it into either chamber\u2019s budget. Legislative earmarks in the state budget have also declined since lawmakers passed reforms last year requiring more transparency in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by BridgeMichigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. Sign up for a free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[181,795,100,143,145,144,13],"class_list":["post-361861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-latest-headlines","tag-michigan","tag-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}