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1) Sen. Prusi's "journal statement"  by Admin003 on November 2, 2007 
Senator Prusi's statement is as follows:

Earlier when the Majority Floor Leader made the motion to discharge the Finance Committee from further consideration of this bill, I was all set to leap up to amend the motion to do what we typically do and discharge any committee from any consideration of the bill because, again, we have not had any consideration of this bill; as we had no consideration of some of the earlier very important, very complex issues that have significant import on the economy of this state, on the business of this state, or on the citizens of this state. We compressed what should have been seven months' worth of work in one weekend. Now, lo and behold we are here a month later trying to compress--even less--time another significant or a momentous issue that reflects, I think, one good reason why the people of the state of Michigan are very cynical about the Legislature; that we take these important, complex, and momentous issues and we compress our deliberation into a few people in a side room without any committee hearings and without any testimony from the affected people of this state. And I think that starts us down that road again. I think it is a road that we ought to be very careful we tread upon.

Our leader indicated that he expects us to work in a bipartisan, collegial fashion and come up with a policy that is going to matter and a policy that is going to actually work for this state. I am keeping my fingers crossed because if we are going to compress this kind of decision-making into this kind of a timeframe, we are going to be back here in January fixing that, and February fixing the next one, and in March fixing the other one.

So if we are going to work on this legislation, do it in a bipartisan fashion. Let's have enough people in the room and have enough input in the room, rather than expecting all 38 of us to cast significant votes on something that has been worked on by people outside of this chamber, people not elected to represent the people of this state. So I would just ask that we all be given a chance to put our input into this and to make suggestions and to make changes and to do the work that we were elected to do; not the interest groups who are pushing for this, not the people who start to squawk after our last go-round with tax policy around here.

So I am not real comfortable taking $50 million regardless of what we do down the road. This has a significant impact into the continuation budget that we just passed here a couple of nights ago. That is not a frivolous thing to be doing here--to take $50 million and to just toss it way because we have not figured out what we are doing here. We did the wrong thing a month ago and we are going to try to do the right thing here and now.

So, Mr.President and colleagues, I am very reluctant and I don't believe that I can put up an affirmative vote for this bill at this time.

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2) Sen. Garcia's "journal statement"  by Admin003 on November 2, 2007 
Senator Garcia's statement is as follows:

As you know, I was one of the three votes for this use tax on this side of the aisle. I think this is a good compromise. I disagree, respectfully, with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are not in a position to vote for this yet. I think that it does give us time to craft a better solution. It was something that I felt that we needed to do. We still need to replace the revenue because the state does need it. I know I have a lot--at least I thought I had a lot--of friends in the business community, and I hope I still do.

But my point is we want to make sure that we take a little bit more time and find a reasonable solution. I think the Minority Leader's comments about working together is a good point. I think it is important that we take this step forward to buy some time to craft a better solution. I just wish that my friends on the other side of the aisle would help us in this. I think it would go a long way to demonstrating trust and that we can all work together on this.

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3) Sen. Schauer's "journal statement"  by Admin003 on November 2, 2007 
Senator Schauer's statement is as follows:

This bill is intended, as I understand it, as a way for us to start a process and a dialogue about tax policy in this state. Unfortunately, faced with a very difficult and important deadline just over a month ago, we didn't take the time that we now have the opportunity to take in crafting tax policy on a bipartisan basis that's good for Michigan.

This bill, in my opinion, is very much a work in progress. It is a vehicle bill, frankly, that contains more questions than answers. So I'm not in a position to vote "yes" on this bill. I do expect that the House and the Senate will work together and will enact good public policy that is revenue-neutral, including generating revenue to make up for any delay in implementation of the current use tax.

So this is a start of a process; one that I expect to be bipartisan in nature and, at the end of the day, produces tax policy on a bipartisan basis that hopefully many of us will be able to support.

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