House, Senate R's Meet In Joint Caucus; 8 Session Days Added To House Calendar

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/24/2025) The House and Senate Republican caucuses discussed what they want out of a budget in a joint meeting in the House Appropriations Room Wednesday that included a presentation on revenue increases that Democrats asked be considered.

No vote was taken, but tax increases Democrats or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have suggested, such as raising the Corporate Income Tax (CIT), alternating the marijuana tax to a wholesale tax and more, were kicked around.

Others on the list included higher fees on heavy trucks, electric vehicles and hybrids. Also included was a tax on fuel, digital advertising, a delivery tax, hemp I-gaming, a vehicle depreciation tax, and what was called "decoupling."

In the new federal budget, a tax break was granted to some major companies, like Dow. Under current state law, Michigan has to provide the same savings. The proposal is to decouple the state from the feds at a savings for state coffers if lawmakers were to agree.

To be sure, polling the members on possible tax hikes is one thing, but that is not a guarantee that any of those on the list would come into play as part of an 11th hour budget deal. But the fact that a list even got this far, might be seen by some to be at least a willingness by the Republicans to discuss it?

“We’re fighting hard to ensure that the government doesn’t continue to grow far exceeding the growth of inflation,” said House Majority Floor Leader Bryan POSTHUMUS (R-Rockford) of the joint caucus meeting. “While the House is adding session days to the calendar, the Senate is not coming in.”

Two House session days have been added between today and the Oct. 1 budget deadline and an additional six have been added by Oct. 13 in a revised session schedule created six days before a government shutdown takes place.

Roads Lobby Reacts To Lower Road Funding Number

 "This does not completely solve the problem, (but) there is no question about it" that this is better than nothing.

With "mixed emotions" the lobbyist for the road builders is more than willing to take a smaller slice of the road building pie with budget negotiators reportedly now lowering the target from $3 billion to somewhere around $2 billion or so for the road fix piece of a budget deal that continues to move forward with more optimism surrounding the talks (See “Renewed Optimism On Budget Deal As Framework Taking Shape,” 9/23/25).

"It's $2 billion on-going every year into perpetuity, so we can certainly be appreciative of that," said Lance BINONIEMI, who is especially pleased that his years in the legislative trenches have finally resulted in all the taxes collected at the pump ending up in road work, under a preliminary deal signed over the last few days.

Nonetheless, because it is not $3 billion, Binoniemi feels there will be some road workers leaving the state for richer fields to pave over.

"There still may be some jobs lost but clearly not the 10,000 we forecasted if nothing was done, but we will probably see a couple of thousand jobs lost, (but) we are supportive of this very large investment, even though we were hopeful it would have been more."

House Changes Calendar

Posthumus said earlier in the day, before announcing that the House is meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow, that he fully expects to have to meet Friday, Sept. 26 and Monday, Sept. 29. Voting on those days would potentially be budget implementation bills or policy bills.

“We want to make sure people know that if the budget isn’t done by 11:59 p.m. on September 30 that we’re going to continue to come in, and we’re going to work as hard as we can for a long as we can until something is done,” Posthumus said.

Additional days include Oct. 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 13. Posthumus said he doesn’t think all of those days will be used, and he is personally operating under the expectation that a budget will be done before a government shutdown is triggered.

Posthumus said, although he doesn’t serve on the House Appropriations Committee, his understanding is that there has been a decent amount of progress made.

“A lot of it is talking about, where do we stand? What hills do we die on and what hills do we not die on? Those are conversations I’m not able to share with the public,” Posthumus said.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, Rep. Alicia St. Germaine (R-Harrison Township) posted on Facebook telling her friends to “be sure to purchase hunting, fishing, ORV" licenses by Oct. 1 “which is when a state government shutdown will likely happen.”