House Calls Back Senate-Sponsored Bills As Tensions Mount

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 12/17/2025) The relationship between the House and Senate remained frayed on Wednesday after the House called back 11 Senate-sponsored bills it moved on Tuesday, responding to the Senate's failure to pass all the House-sponsored bills it pledged to pass.

SB 23, SB 25, SB 82, SB 93, SB 96, SB 97, SB 98, SB 158, SB 269, SB 512 and SB 513 are all back in the House unless the Senate follows its posted agenda for Thursday and passes HB 4262, HB 4122, HB 4065, HB 4595 and HB 4282.

House Majority Floor Leader Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford) said that under an agreement reached by House and Senate leadership, if the Senate passed a certain number of House bills, the House would pass a certain number of Senate bills.

With the House Appropriations Committee derailing $644.9 million in work projects last week, Senate Democrats weren't in the mood to pass all of its House bills Wednesday.

“We decided that if they weren't going to hold up their end of the bargain, we'd hold their bills in the House until they're ready to do it,” Posthumus said.

In other fallout from the work projects decision, House Democrats tried to tie-bar various pieces of legislation to HB 4576, the Senate subbed out a supplemental spending bill that restores all $644.9 million in spending.

Rep. Samantha Steckloff (D-Farmington Hills) made the argument that the bill before the House, HB 5284 is similar to HB 4576 in that both aim to make it easier to retain employment.

The amendment failed, as did other attempts in four standing House committees on Wednesday. Despite some Republicans in the House and Senate privately speaking out against the funding cuts over the last week, every House Republican remained silent or actively endorsed the cuts with their voting decisions, said House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton).

“Today we gave the few dissenting Republicans who, for a moment, pretended to genuinely care about their communities, the chance to do what is right and vote yes to restore that funding,” he said. “Instead of doing the courageous thing, every single one of them held the party line and hid behind Speaker Hall. Despite massive public outcry from nearly every district in this state and hours of testimony in the Senate yesterday, Republicans chose 15 different times today to tell vulnerable Michiganders who were promised, and counting on, that money, ‘screw you'"

House Majority Floor Leader Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford) responded by questioning whether HB 4576 was properly amended Wednesday in the Senate. As introduced, the bill only created appropriations for the Department of Education, but the Senate expanded it to cover multiple state departments, raising questions about its constitutionality. He assumed that was one of the only House-passed bills in their possession, so they used that one.