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Republican 86% 13% 0% 22 total votes

Democrat 56% 43% 0% 16 total votes

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1) Re: 2010 Senate Bill 1152 (Appropriations: 2010-2011 Department of Community Health budget )  by MichiganVotes.org Editor on September 22, 2010 

Senator Cherry’s statement is as follows:

This budget is one, as you know, over the many years, I have not voted for—in recent years that’s for sure; at least not in the past three years. I just had a colleague comment to me that they can’t believe this passed the conference committee unanimously, but I want to tell you why it did.  This budget, when it left the Senate, had huge cuts in it that I and many of us found to be just too much. They hurt citizens, and they put people in danger. Most of this was restored within the conference report. I want to thank the chair of the committee for his work with everyone and for being able to come up with these changes so that we have a budget well over the past years we have been cutting, cutting, cutting. So this budget, I don’t want to say is the answer to everything because we still have been working with limited dollars, and there are still long waiting lists in Aging, and still problems throughout the mental health system where we are not fully funding it, but at least in this budget, we did not hurt them even more.

So because of this, I am voting “yes” for this budget. I would like to put this on record however, because I think it is important for the next Legislature, of which very few of us will be a part of, because they need to look at this budget and these services as vital to the state of Michigan. They need to find a way to come up with the resources necessary to provide mental health services, health care to children with special needs, fully provide Medicaid services to the population to take care of benefit waivers, caretaker relatives, and 19- and 20-year-olds, and to make sure we are providing those services.

So while it is not the best budget in the world, given the resources that are available, it is a pretty good budget. So, Mr. President, I am voting for it and ask my colleagues to do so.

2) Re: 2010 Senate Bill 1152 (Appropriations: 2010-2011 Department of Community Health budget )  by MichiganVotes.org Editor on September 22, 2010 

Senator Kahn’s statement is as follows:

Senate Bill No. 1152, the Department of Community Health budget, for next year was finished today and voted out of the conference committee. It was voted out, I am happy to say, unanimously. I would like to thank the vice chairs, Senators Pappageorge and Cherry for their insights and improvements in the ultimate bill.

You might remember that last year this was a very difficult and contentious bill. How did it come to be that it was passed unanimously? Some of the areas within this bill that we had concerns about, in particular, the community mental health General Fund line, was substantially improved. In the past, we had as much as $50 million in reductions and this was reduced, I am happy to say, to a mere $2 million.

We came in at the adjusted target of $2.421 million, as per the conference committee recommendations from leadership. There was only one small cut to the Healthy Michigan Fund as originally proposed by the executive. The rest of the programming was preserved. Medicaid and other programs based on cost estimates were fully funded.

Where did we find the reductions to meet the target? This was done through the actuarial soundness line which, thankfully, we were able to use as a method for generating original funds. How? When it was originally proposed in the Governor’s budget in February, they had to be estimated because this is a re-basing year, and the actual numbers were not available. They are available now and showed a nearly $50 million savings at the end of the day.

How about public health? The reduction to public health was markedly reduced, and, in fact, it is only a $1 million reduction which, if you will remember, last year, we had a $1 million increase. Over a two-year period of time, public health has been whole—no increase, no decrease.

There was a proposal from the executive to eliminate human growth hormone funding and the children’s special health care program. That was restored. Services for transportation were largely restored.

So at the end of the day, this particular budget is much-improved from the concerns that we had earlier. As a last note, adult dental is restored; podiatric services, restored; vision coverage, restored as per the request of the optometry community; and the second distribution pool which was vetoed last year is, in fact, restored as well.

These improvements, I think, warrant all of our votes in support of this bill and I urge passage by the Senate.

3) Re: 2010 Senate Bill 1152 (Appropriations: 2010-2011 Department of Community Health budget )  by Admin003 on March 24, 2010 

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