Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on February 6, 2009, to end the post-retirement health care insurance coverage provided to future legislators (those first elected after Nov. 1, 2010), but not for any current legislators. Under current law, former legislators who have been in office for five years get full health coverage beginning at age 55

The vote was 103 in favor, 1 opposed and 5 not voting

(House Roll Call 19 at House Journal 0)

Click here to view bill details.

If you really were serious about about cutting costs, you would have done this for all retiring legislators.  What is so special about current legislators that they should be expempt?  I hate to be the one to tell you this but your true motivation is showing.  It is easy to cut benefits for someone else, as long as you are not  effected.  Looks pretty bad, guys.  Don't expect Michigan residents to take you seriously if you are going to pull this kind of stuff.

 

Senators Patterson, Switalski, Jacobs, Gleason, Brater, Scott, Basham and Garcia, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of House Bill No. 4194.

Senator Patterson moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the bill be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”

The motion prevailed.

Senator Patterson’s statement, in which Senators Switalski, Jacobs, Gleason, Brater, Scott and Basham concurred, is as follows:

I beg your indulgences, as I am not nearly as witty as the previous speaker. In fact, for purposes of this discussion, I’ll assert without fear of contradiction that I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer and not the brightest bulb in the lamp. I can discern a train wreck. I can express disgust.

We, the members of this body, are out to destroy it. The legislative branch of government is important. It is one of the three legs on which our form of self-government stands. With term limits firmly in place, our future depends on attracting a pool of talented people willing to make the sacrifice and do the job as legislators. Obviously, that pool hasn’t been well-stocked, but I guarantee that we now are not on a course to fill it up with fine specimens worthy of being trophy mounts. We need a talented pool of candidates to serve to offer up solutions to the challenges facing our great state today and tomorrow.

We need to find the ability to attract real leaders to come forth and serve. How do we do that? How do we attract the best and the brightest to serve as House members or Senators? By offering them outstanding compensation or societal adulation? Where we can read every day, day in and day out, how hard we work and how much we accomplish. You can bet on that being in the paper.

We can expect praise and appreciation for working all of 100 days—an hour here and an hour there—solving the problems and kicking the can down the road. You bet, that is why there are so many people lining up to fill these positions going forward.

We, as a society, reward certain occupations. Be an entertainer. Be a star athlete. Justin Verlander is praised as being a great Detroiter because he settled for a mere $80 million for a five-year contract to throw a baseball. What is wrong with this picture, ladies and gentlemen? We have athletic directors, football coaches, baseball coaches, basketball coaches, and hockey players who are becoming multimillionaires. Why? Because they are solving today’s problems? No, not a chance.

Go out there and ask the business leaders who have all the solutions. Why don’t you choose to serve? Well, not me. Not me. I don’t want to read my name in the paper. Hello, what are we doing? Cutting compensation for the future; that’s real leadership. That’s courage. That’s going to solve today’s problems. Shame on us. We are setting this state up for failure. We need to be attracting the best and the brightest, not some motley crew.

This is serious business, ladies and gentlemen. The Constitution says that there will be a State Officers Compensation Commission. Why? Because they wanted salaries and expense allowances to be set in a way that we couldn’t continue to stab ourselves in the eye. Shall we go about fringe benefit cutting, as though this wasn’t some portion of earned compensation? It is. If you read the history of this country, you will know that fringe benefits came about as a way around—a loophole—during World War II to get the best and the brightest to serve in certain industrial positions because there were wage caps.

Yeah, we can pander. We can satisfy the headline hounds, but we are destroying this institution, and we should be ashamed.

 

Senator Garcia’s statement is as follows:

When I came out of the caucus room, I fully intended to vote for this measure. But as I sat there and thought about it some more and listened to the comments that were being made, I realized that the train had left the station, and the bill was going to pass regardless of whether it had my vote or not.

Sometimes we do a lot of things in here that are imperfect. It is difficult to get them perfect. So while I don’t question the need to make adjustments, you may have noticed that I voted for my good colleague from the 10th District’s amendment to have a graduated form of coverage because I do believe that future legislators do deserve some type of health care. Certainly not to the extent of what we have now, especially if you only serve for six years or for eight years. There ought to be something for those years of public service.

As some of my colleagues have pointed out, you will never read in the news media about what a great job that we do or the hours that we work or anything like that. So I guess I rise primarily to say, you know, there needs to be a better way because in ten months and five days, I will done here—not that I am counting. But I will be given at some point some type of health care coverage; not lifetime as some have alluded to, but the point is that if you serve in public service, there ought to be some type of compensation for the hours that you put in, for the difficulty of the task because despite what the public thinks, I think we all in here would agree that the sacrifice is great, the hours are great, and the challenges are also difficult.

You are going to need some very bright people in here to solve some very difficult problems that lie ahead. So with that being said, as I said at the very beginning, I had planned to vote for this and changed my mind because it is an imperfect system. Some adjustment needed to be made, and I know that I will be answering to the press for this a little bit later, but that is why I voted “no.”

 

Senator Switalski’s first statement is as follows:

This bill goes too far. My amendment tie-bars House Bill No. 4194 to Senate Bill No. 133, Senator Kuipers’ bill that establishes a graded premium for legislators. I think free lifetime health care is wrong and must end. To fix it, I favor a tie-bar to Senate Bill No. 133, which would, with slight modification, introduce a graded premium for legislators, similar to the reform we enacted for new teachers in 2007.

I ask you, is it fair that future legislators who serve 6 years in the House and 8 years in the Senate, for a total of 14 years, get no coverage? Should we treat legislators worse than any other state employee or teacher? That is what House Bill No. 4194 does.

This amendment would end free lifetime health care. It would require a 20 percent co-pay, 15 percent if a member was in a wellness plan, and restrict coverage to the 10-year period from age 55-65 when Medicare begins. The co-pay requirement would continue.

So I ask you to reform legislative health care, rather than destroy it. Please support my amendment.

 

Senator Jacobs’ statement is as follows:

I rise to support the Switalski amendment because without it I will have a very difficult time voting for this bill. I am going to try to be somewhat coherent in this.

I want to take a look at what the problem is that we are really trying to fix here. I have to be honest. I think that a lot of the rhetoric and action we are seeing right now is because we know how angry—and rightfully so—people are in Michigan. They are hurting. We know what the pollsters are saying. We know that this is very popular today. However, like those snowmen that were outside yesterday, if you look out there today, there is just a bunch of snow, and in a couple of weeks, they will have melted altogether.

We also have to be looking at the future not just what is going to stick one day when it is cold and under 32 degrees at this Capitol. The voters are angry because they see that they are out of a job, and their benefits have been cut. But if we take a look at what the real problem is, we have to work harder to eliminate poverty in this state. We have to make sure that the kids who go to our schools are getting educated. We have to look at funding preschool education because we know what the economic boost is for this state. We have to fix our antiquated tax structures. We have to fix our antiquated heating and cooling systems in our schools. We have to make sure that this institution in the Legislature remains intact.

I am so concerned that we, as a Legislature and actually sometimes as voters in Michigan, react to strongly too what we think is public sentiment. We do things we are sorry for later. I think term limits is one of those things where we are still suffering from the unintended consequences of what seemed like such a good idea. I think that is what is going to happen unless we don’t just single out legislators’ health care benefits because that is not what the problem is. But it is a great thing that we can go back tomorrow and write wonderful press releases that will play great in our districts.

This is all about what we should be doing to make Michigan a stronger place and keeping this institution as something we can be proud of; not trying to break this institution for future legislators. I think we have that responsibility.

I guess the irony of this whole thing for me, particularly as we debate health care at the federal level, is we haven’t even fixed what we need to do in terms of the individual market reform here in this state. So for those legislators who aren’t going to get health insurance later on, they won’t even be able to have the ability to go and negotiate for better prices when they are out trying to find health care for themselves and their families later on. We have so much that we need to fix.

But this, to me, is not the way we ought to be going about fixing things. So all I can tell you is there was a wise philosopher, my friend Rena’s father, Will Goldman who once said, “Don’t spit in the water because someday you may have to drink it.” And I want my colleagues to remember Will Goldman from Texas, a very wise man who has long since died.

 

Senator Pappageorge’s statement is as follows:

I have a procedural problem here. We had the Senator from the 10th District get up and say why don’t we tie-bar two different things? Why don’t we figure out how to make a train go to two different train stations at the same time? Now, if he had proposed a substitute, I would have understood it.

Then we had the Senator from the 10th District kind of change the subject. The subject is benefits for legislators. You either vote red or green. But the idea of tie-barring two things that are different and inconsistent with each other doesn’t make a lot of sense. So I say let’s figure out whether you want to vote red or green with this thing, and get on with it.

 

Senator Switalski’s second statement is as follows:

I started out by talking about how this bill goes too far. I note that this bill will affect no one in this chamber but everyone who first enters the Capitol in the future. This is hardly courageous, nor is it fair.

I am disappointed in the defeat of the tie-bar to Senator Kuipers’ eminently reasonable Senate Bill No. 133. Perhaps that was unacceptable because such sensible reform just doesn’t go far enough. If that is your position, perhaps you will wish to co‑sponsor the Senate concurrent resolution I have today requested, which will end the state constitutional ban on capital punishment, but limit its application to legislators only. Although I consider it a modest proposal, you may be reluctant to do something as permanent and drastic as amending the Constitution.

Allow me to reassure you. I brought it up last week in my town hall, and though some listeners were circumspect, several attendees offered to sign it immediately. Furthermore, capital punishment for legislators is the ultimate term limit, and it has the additional benefit of permanently eliminating health care costs for all retired legislators. I am a reasonable man, so understand that I am open to grandfathering in current members if that is what it takes to get a two-thirds vote.

 

Senator Whitmer’s statement is as follows:

I listened with great interest to my predecessor who just spoke, and I have a great deal of respect for him. I agree with some of the points which he made. I would differ in that I think term limits have had a worse impact on this institution than any action we are taking today. I would also say that had I originally proposed this legislation, I think it should apply to every single one of us because that is the right thing to do.

I’ve been accused that maybe I was pandering for an attorney general spot. Well, I think I proved you wrong on that one. I’ve also heard a lot of people say, “Well, the Legislature, they are a bunch of fat cats who have health care through other jobs.” I don’t. I don’t have a spouse who has health care either. This is a real sacrifice, but I think it is the right thing to do.

Now I have news for you if you think you are sidestepping any possibility this may happen to you in the future. I think you are wrong. I don’t know if you’ve listened to the Republicans and the Democrats who are seeking gubernatorial office, and I’m sure on the campaign trail, we are going to hear a lot about this. So I don’t think this is the end of the issue. I’m not making any predictions or threats. I’m just saying I think you are sticking your head in the sand if you think that this is your get-out-of-town.

There is no courage in cutting someone else. Real leadership is about leading by example, sharing in sacrifice. To my colleague from the 7th District, I don’t believe that you get the best legislators if the Legislature treats themselves better than everyone else. I believe you get a group who is out of touch; a group who thinks it is OK to shut down government, close schools, hurt kids, and get cops off of our streets.

I will never forget sitting here on the second shutdown in three years and seeing no urgency on the faces of my colleagues—out of touch. So I don’t see any candidates for profiles in courage. I see a Legislature that is going to take action to impact a totally different group of people, and that saddens me. So I think that perhaps my colleague from the 7th District and I see similarly but for very different reasons.

This action today is not good enough, in my opinion.

 

Senator Gleason’s statement is as follows:

It appears that I am the only Senator who can come back who voted against this. I am glad I did. I was kind of raised that is if you want people who come after you to think as much of you as you have treated them, my statement is pretty simply actually. If not mine, then nobody.