House GOP Passes Budget Early, Touts ‘Real Spending’ Approach, Cuts to Vacant Positions

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 04/22/2026) House Republicans muscled their Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget plan (HB 5619) through the chamber Wednesday night, marking the earliest that a first-run omnibus has passed the House in at least a decade. It follows a cycle in which the House's first budget bill wasn't passed until late summer.

Regardless, House Republicans quickly touted two selling points: They moved a spending plan before the Senate and built the plan by going “line by line” through what departments actually spent in prior years instead of simply building off the governor’s recommendation.

Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) said that approach allowed Republicans to cut 3,327 “ghost employees," vacant state positions he argues are unnecessarily inflating the budget.

“We were able to cut $2 billion from this budget without cutting anything," Hall said in his press conference following session.

Appropriations Chair Ann Bollin (R-Brighton) made the same case, saying Republicans used a three-year look-back on actual spending and based their targets off the highest amount departments truly spent or needed, rather than automatically accepting annual increases.

“What we found is, over every year, in many cases, it’s almost twice the amount that’s budgeted that actually gets spent,” Bollin said. “So this is actual spending, what the departments need . . . It’s actually a real budget based on what the actual spends were.”

Republicans framed the vote as a more normal start to the process than last year’s drawn-out negotiations, with Hall mocking Democrats for criticizing the House in 2025 for moving too slowly and now watching Republicans beat the Senate to passage.

The GOP plan includes a $250 per-pupil increase, bringing the foundation allowance to $10,300. It provides universal school breakfast and lunch, $100 million more for roads, $65 million more in revenue sharing for local governments and another $10 million for the public safety trust fund, Hall said.

Bollin also said one adopted amendment would move $300 million from the now-defunct Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve (SOAR) to the rainy day fund. Roughly $150 million in legislative-directed spending items (LDSI) would support infrastructure, water and wastewater projects, bridges, roads, fire trucks and emergency services.

Democrats blasted the budget as a partisan messaging document rather than a workable spending plan for divided government.

Rep. Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) said the vote was more “political showmanship” than problem-solving and argued Republicans were advancing deep cuts to Medicaid, higher education and state staffing “without any rhyme or reason.”

Democrats especially zeroed in on the House’s treatment of higher education, repeatedly calling it a 62% cut to the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Rep. Jason Morgan (D-Ann Arbor) flatly rejected Bollin's attempts to frame the reductions differently, deferring attention to the overall cuts to higher education, saying the official state budget documents “outline a 62.5 and 62.6% cut” to the two universities and that “there’s no gaslighting your way out of it.”

Democrats also warned Republicans were balancing the budget by assuming major Medicaid savings tied to work requirements and eligibility changes. Though they criticized the executive assumed $150 million in Medicaid savings, they further slammed Republicans for assuming they could double that number to $300 million, assuming the savings would come from people losing their coverage.

In the School Aid budget, Democrats said Republicans backed away from a weighted funding formula supported by education groups and instead steered money into items like private tutoring and STEM programming that could have gone directly into school aid. They also criticized the elimination of arts funding and said some boilerplate appeared written so narrowly it could steer grants to specific vendors without naming them.

Compared to last year, the House went to work early to pass their budget. They started their day at 8 a.m. going over the proposal in the Appropriations Committee and continued to work over 14 hours to pass it during session. Although Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton) didn't think this was grounds for celebration.

“You don't celebrate something you're supposed to do,” Puri said, though he did add that Republicans seemed to “learn a lesson from their failed approach last year.”

Democrats further argued that vacant positions should not automatically be treated as disposable. They pointed to staffing shortages in corrections, public safety and school meal administration as examples where unfilled jobs still reflect real needs, not waste.

Still, Bollin said the House package is meant to be a starting point, not the final word, and expressed confidence Republicans can still strike a deal with the Senate and governor.

“We have presented a responsible, responsive, understandable, basic budget based on real dollars that will produce real results,” Bollin said. “If the Senate is willing, and the executive are willing to come to the table, where there’s a will, there will be a way.”

Hall suggested the budget may ultimately serve as a short-term framework rather than a long-term spending plan, noting it will only cover the final months of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration.

"We're really only budgeting for three months of Whitmer, and then we're going to renegotiate this deal with a new governor," Hall said. “And so when you look at it that way, this is actually the least important budget since I've been there.”

In other news, during the Speaker's press conference Wednesday, he congratulated Rep. Joe Tate (D-Detroit) for getting $6 million into the budget for a “soup kitchen.”

“It's an important project dear to his heart, also that (Rep.) John Roth (R-Interlochen) cared a lot about,” Hall said. “So, we're very happy to help Speaker Tate with that project, as well.”