After House Republicans failed to secure enough votes to increase the cigarette tax Wednesday, House Democrats seized the opportunity to push their budget plan forward.
The plan would raise $352 million by consolidating departments, freezing the single business tax, and taking money from the state lottery and “rainy day” fund.
“It’s time to stop using smoke and mirrors to fix this budget crisis and start taking our jobs seriously,” said House Minority Leader Samuel “Buzz” Thomas, D-Detroit. “Instead of fixing the problem piecemeal, our proposal will fix this year’s budget problem.”
Rep. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, said the Democrats’ plan is necessary.
“We need to look at tightening our belts first,” she said. “A lot of departments are duplicative. There’s still a lot of fat in state government.”
But Republicans felt raising the cigarette tax would be a better fix for the current budget problems.
After amending a school-aid bill to raise the state’s cigarette tax by 50 cents, the House failed to get enough votes early Thursday to pass the measure. The House voted 53-49 in favor of the bill, but needed 55 votes to pass it. The vote came in just after midnight.
A plan by Gov. John Engler would have used 20 cents of the proposed hike for school aid, 22 cents for the general fund, four cents for Medicaid and almost a cent for Wayne County’s health care program for low-income families.
House Speaker Rep. Rick Johnson, R-LeRoy, called Democrats “irresponsible” and accused them of “smoking something” when they rejected the proposed cigarette tax.
“Democrats are doing nothing more than helping Big Tobacco,” he said. “They won, Big Tobacco won. Kids in Michigan and the K-12 system are the losers.”
Johnson said the Democrats’ unwillingness to cooperate with Republicans threatened to “shut down state government.”
“You are a state representative,” he said to Democrats. “No place does it say Democratic representative or Republican representative when you walk in that door.
“That means you do what’s best for the state and, frankly, that’s not happening on both sides of the aisle right now.”
Whitmer said she was disappointed Johnson resorted to “name-calling and false innuendoes.”
“We’re in a financial crisis and the solution he comes up with is muckraking, mudslinging and name-calling,” Whitmer said. “His remarks add nothing to the real debate on how to solve Michigan’s economic problems and may only have made the problem worse.”
