LANSING – Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard‘s unsuccessful 12-hour marathon session to roll back the income tax rate made matters for tax cut proposals more difficult going forward, Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said Thursday, but the issue of an income tax cut isn’t necessarily dead in his caucus.
“There’s discussion over here but again … when you actually change that formula and you don’t have enough and you have to make some cuts, we don’t always agree on cuts. And I think you saw that last night too,” Meekhof (R-West Olive) told reporters after a far less dramatic, roughly one-hour session. “The speaker has his work cut out for him.”
Meekhof has been supportive of a tax cut in concept but reluctant to place his support behind any specific proposal yet – much less the one being pushed by Rep. Lee Chatfield (R-Levering) and Leonard (R-DeWitt) – without fully vetting it.
With the Senate’s primary proponent of an income tax cut, Sen. Jack Brandenburg (R-Harrison Township), out for medical reasons, it began to seem as though the Senate would at least wait until he came back to consider the House proposal, had it been successful, alongside perhaps a Senate proposal.
Meekhof has also maintained that his caucus has its own ideas regarding how they can “give back” to the citizens, though he has not provided specific details related to that statement. He said Thursday his caucus is having a retreat next week, and in light of the evolving situation in the House, tax cut proposals from either chamber seem like an inevitable topic.
Asked whether he had any empathy for the speaker, Meekhof said, “I’m not really prepared to comment on what happened in their caucus because I’ve got to take care of mine.
“I’m more focused on our caucus retreat next week and the solutions we’re going to bring forward to make sure Michigan citizens understand the value for money we’ve given them, how much debt we’ve paid down, all the things we think we can do to improve their life and use their money wisely, maybe return some of it,” he said.
But when asked if he was glad that he wasn’t the speaker, Meekhof quipped, “I woke up this morning and the birds were chirping. It was a great day.”
He was also fairly mum on whether it was “typical” for a leader to pull a member’s committee post if they didn’t vote with the caucus.
“Again, I think that’s internal caucus politics, and I have my own internal caucus politics, so I’ll just let him deal with his own,” Meekhof said.
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