Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on February 22, 2011, the Senate version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2011-2012 Department of Community Health budget. This would appropriate $13.833 billion in gross spending, compared to $14.124 billion the previous year (which included $650 million of extra federal "stimulus" spending). Of this, $8.686 billion is federal money. The budget presumes a 1 percent tax on health insurance claims, which would replace roughly equivalent taxes on health care providers, and is designed to bring in more federal Medicaid money

The vote was 26 in favor, 12 opposed and 0 not voting

(Senate Roll Call 97 at Senate Journal 0)

Click here to view bill details.

Senators Gregory, Whitmer and Anderson, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against 

the passage of Senate Bill No. 172.

Senator Gregory moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the bill be printed as his reasons for voting 

“no.”

The motion prevailed.

Senator Gregory’s statement, in which Senators Whitmer and Anderson concurred, is as follows:

As a minority representative on this committee, I rise today to express my opposition to this legislation. Protecting the 

public health of our citizens is one of the critical services our government provides. Unfortunately, instead of making the 

level of service we provide toward that effort, our priority in this budget, we instead made it another piece of a political 

shell game being played to justify the massive corporate tax giveaway this overall budget plan provides.

Make no mistake, the cuts being included in this bill, including gutting the Healthy Michigan Fund and reducing 

graduate medical education and the Michigan Quality Community Care Council to $100 placeholders, are disappointing. 

But when we realize that these are symptoms of that much larger problem, I simply cannot support this budget.

I hear the Governor and my colleagues across the aisle call these cuts shared sacrifice. To that, I ask what is your 

definition of sacrifice? From what I see, we are asking working families to sacrifice, we are asking seniors to sacrifice, 

and we are certainly asking our schoolchildren to sacrifice. Yet, while we ask for these sacrifices, big corporations only 

reap the rewards of the $1.8 billion tax giveaway that compounds our budget problem and forces cuts to needed programs, 

such as the ones in the Department of Community Health we are discussing in this bill. That isn’t shared sacrifice. It isn’t 

right, and it isn’t what the people of Michigan sent us here to Lansing to do.

To my colleagues across the aisle, I say we have actually listened to the voters across our state, and we have news for 

you. Yes we all know times are tough, and yes, we are all prepared to chip in if it truly means shared sacrifice. But we 

are not willing to raise pension taxes, slash education, and cut vital health programs to pay for a $2 billion tax cut for 

businesses. I will be voting “no” on this bill and encourage my colleagues to do so.

B

Community health care responsible representatives are doing their best to ensure proper care to all the citizens, equals in right to medical assistance. I have noticed some improvements in the health care system, I don`t know whether we`re blessed to have extraordinary local authority representatives or it`s a matter of national stimulus policy, but I am happy about it. For example, there are still places where patients are sent to private teleradiology services because hospitals can`t offer a series of medical tests. Aren`t we lucky enough that we have, for a change, all of these?