Michigan Budget Reaction

Majority Floor Leader Representative Bryan Posthumus joins us to discuss the key takeaways for Michigan Republicans now that the Michigan state budget is set. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, the budget has been signed in the state of Michigan.
Not talking about the national level this time around. What's
in it for you? This is West Michigan's Morning News.
Steve Kelly and Brett Kita, Majority Floor A leader and
Representative Brian Postumus on the liveline with us today. Representative,
thanks for doing this today.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh happy to be on. Thanks for having me. Let's talk.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Let's start with we had the governor on late last
week and you guys actually agreed on a lot of stuff.
But let's start with something she didn't talk about, and
that's waste and fraud. Talk to us a little bit
about what you caught out of the budget.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
You know, I'm glad you brought that up to start
the show. Look, we found in our review of the budget,
we found nearly five thousand phantom employees in the state budget.
These are these are employment positions that have been getting
funded year after year after year to the tune of
nearly a half billion dollars that were going unfilled. And

(00:58):
so we were able to work out in the negotiations
and got rid of.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Over two thousand of them. So that was a big
part of the waste, fraud and abuse that we were
able to get rid of.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
On top of that, we were able to get rid
of a lot of the corporate welfare programs, the corporate
subsidies that the state has been doling out. You know,
I don't know about you, but for me, I consider
that either waste or fraud, one.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Or the other.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
But we were able to do away with nearly a
half billion dollars of that as well. And then the
third third area that I think is critically important, we
restructured the entire way the appropriations process is done. We
started this in the House representatives, where any legislator that
wants to put forward an earmark, they have to sign

(01:45):
their name to it, they have to be willing to
sponsor it and disclose who the recipient is.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So we no longer have any of these issues like the.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Four five hundred dollars coffee maker that we had in
the governor's budget a couple of years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
So those are the areas that we wanted to tackle.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Representative. This has become quite an issue because of the
budget running out and coming from a household of a
teacher to full disclosure, and Steve's wife was a teacher
as well. Talk about free school meals being reinstated, and
also what this budget does for the per pupil for schools.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
So, first of all, I want.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
To make sure it's very clear that the House Republican
budget that we passed several months ago, funded, funded, provided
all of the funding for free school lunches. It gave
discretion to the school district so they could allocate that
funding to the needs of their local school districts, but
it was always funded at the state level.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Now, keeping it in and making a.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Specific line item to it was clearly clearly important to
the people in Michigan, and so in the negotiated budget,
that's where we landed on. But also even while still
maintaining that, we were still able to increase the per
per pupil funding to ten fifty dollars per student, which
is a record in the state of Michigan, and that's

(03:05):
coming on the heels of the last two years under
Democrat control when they didn't get an increase at all.
So I'm really proud that we were able to get
that done this year.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
So what about rhads. You know, the governor has brought
that up from time to time campaigning and since she's
been on the office in the office, but we all
have to deal with the bills too for pothole repairs.
Where do we stand on it and how do you
feel about it?

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I feel really good about the progress we made. You know,
the Republican budget that we initially proposed a few months ago,
we called for three point four billion dollars in road funding.
We weren't able to get that much done in this budget,
but we're still putting forward record funding for roads and
annualized every year nearly two billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
In road funding, which I think is going to go
a long ways to improving the infrastructure in the state
of Michigan.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
And on top of that, you know, it's not all
going to be going to the city of Detroit. You know,
historically over the last seven years, we've seen a lot
of these road projects being done in Detroit, but not
really much out you know, in Sparta or in Caledonia
or Alto. And you know, I thought it was important
that we were able to ensure that we got funding

(04:23):
for local roads as well as the main highways throughout
the state.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
The Jeordy floor leader, Representative Brian Postumus, thanks for your
time this morning.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
All right, thank you for having me I appreciate it,