As I’m sure many readers are already aware, the Michigan state legislature sent a series of emergency continuation budgets to Governor Granholm’s desk at around 2 am the morning of October 1, narrowly avoiding a shutdown of state government and sending the state’s services into what was essentially regarded the 13th month of fiscal year 2009. Four weeks later, we are still at an impasse, and the only real changes have been strategic ones.

Governor Jennifer Granholm

The governor recently announced the necessity of a further series of cuts to education, bringing the total dollar value of cuts up to $289 per student if new revenues are not raised. Despite Majority Leader Bishop’s willingness to meet with Granholm, and the Senate Republican’s final decision to send the six budget bills passed by both chambers to her desk, his caucus remains obstinate on new sources of revenue. A proposed tax on physicians yielded a weak astroturf effort at lobbying Democratic votes from affluent districts, yet failed along partisan lines.

Granholm has vowed to exercise her line-item veto power and sign the remaining budget bills to make the necessary cuts to higher education, human services, and community health, among others – a scenario that looks more and more likely as Senate Republicans continue to kill new revenue ideas. But if she doesn’t do this by the end of the month, a deadline that has been firmly set for weeks yet now is just hours away, she would effectively be forcing state government into a partial shutdown until a compromise is reached and the 2010 budget is passed in its entirety.

Many observers are speculating that she will do this intentionally, as a means of forcing the Senate to pass new forms of revenue. This would be one hell of a political move, evoking images of the Daley family in Illinois more than Granholm in Michigan. It would be going back on her promise to sign these six bills once Sen. Bishop sent them to her desk, and it would make her directly responsible for the shutdown. Lt. Gov. Cherry may not be a supporter of this decision, since it is certainly not without risk for her entire administration, and he is the unquestionable Democratic frontrunner for the 2010 gubernatorial race. But if she is truly a supporter of the programs intended to serve as her legacy (the last eight years would seem to indicate that she is), the next few days should prove to be interesting at the very least.

Exclusive Update

Sources confirmed new breaking developments over the last few hours, exclusive to The Kosmopolitan. Wednesday, October 28, House freshmen drafted a letter to be sent to Governor Granholm, Leader Bishop, and Speaker Dillon asking that they stop playing politics and finish the budget. A response was sent late Thursday, casting an ultimatum: that freshmen have until December 1 to find agreeable new revenue sources from which to fund the deficit in the K-12 budget, for FY 2010 and into the future. This would seem to imply that lawmakers will be given until December 1 to fund other shortages as well, including the Department of Community Health and higher education. If this transitive assumption proves true, it is safe to assume that the Senate will pass another continuation budget, extending purgatory for the state another 30 days.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold a long-awaited vote on Sen. Max Baucus’ America’s Healthy Future Act. What is most surprising may not be that this bill is finally getting a vote after months of negotiations and holdups, but that it may be the bill that finally makes its way out of Congress and on to the President’s desk all by the end of this year.

Sen. Baucus Meets with Treasury Secretary Geithner

Don’t get me wrong, the Baucus bill has its critics (including yours truly). However, the fact that the bill came out of a series of bipartisan negotiations that angered those on the left and the right has to say something about the overall substance of the bill.

The Baucus bill aims to expand coverage to more Americans via Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (co-ops) and an individual mandate with available tax credits and subsidies. When it comes down to sheer numbers, it would lower the amount of uninsured Americans to 29 million (form a staggering 47 million last year) by the end of the next decade.

In terms of coverage, the Baucus bill makes great strides. In terms of the President’s outline for reform, it meets all mandatory points.

The Baucus bill would put into place a new set of consumer protections that would prohibit insurance companies from denying patients coverage due to pre-existing conditions and also would prohibit them from dropping patients when they get sick. It also focuses on requirements for preventative care and capping certain out-of-pocket expenses.

The down side to the Baucus bill is that it abandons the idea of a public option, and instead favors a co-op health plan. Co-ops would be fine if we could trust insurance companies to price their premiums at market value, but there is no mechanism in the bill to keep their feet to the fire other than a government commission that will likely be given little power. We need to look no further than Blue Cross Blue Shield to see a co-op gone bad, and that is what scares me about this bill.

So far, so good for the Baucus bill. It gets fairly decent marks from me. Additionally, it gets fairly decent marks from a number of former GOP leaders like Bob Dole, Bill Frist, and Chuck Hagel, and the bill doesn’t even cover Bob’s Viagra. But here comes the biggest selling point. The Baucus bill is estimated to reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion over the next decade.

That’s right. I said reduce. And I also said that number is $81 billion (with a “B”).

The key to any voter’s heart lies deep in their pocketbook. This plan will pass through Congress not only because it will make America physically healthier, but because it brings down cost, too.

I said earlier that I am not the biggest fan of this plan. It’s true. I prefer a public option. However, it is clear that such a plan has some Democrats in tough election cycles scratching their heads and has every Republican screaming on Fox News. The Baucus bill meets almost all goals set forth for health care reform and will insure 94 percent of Americans. Those numbers are better than today’s, and I’m happy to support a bill that can pass and improves that number as opposed to one that will fail and leave us back where we started. This debate truly is about America’s Healthy Future, and if we can improve that outlook I’m on boar

Over the past few months I’ve been at the forefront of Michigan’s budget battle witnessing first hand the bitter partisan politics that drive the Great Lakes state. Michigan is well known these days a the state that shut down two out of the past three years due to budget woes, but to say that partisan bickering is a purely Michigan problem would be false. It’s a horrible disease that is strangling our democracy and producing budget shutdowns in states like Michigan, California, and Pennsylvania, and producing lackluster results for citizens that deserve much better. It’s hard to find one root cause of these problems, but I want to focus on term limits and the major headache they’ve created for state legislatures across the nation as they struggle to understand their job and the powers that come with it.

A Purposefully Inaccurate, yet Telling Measurement of Partisan Alignment

At the end of the 1980s the idea that government was bad continued to ring out across our nation. The message of former President Ronald Reagan resonated with a new era of politicians. They found it disgusting that someone could make a career out of public service and civic duty and they were determined to change the way government worked. They were going to make government work for the people.

Noble? In some respect.

But as we’ve seen over the past fifteen plus years it hasn’t cut down on corruption. Instead states like Michigan, a state that passed term limits in 1992, simply created a revolving door of legislators. It didn’t end career cronyism; it merely created a set career path for the power hungry. Today, instead of getting to know the inner workings of the House or Senate chamber, our politicians merely act in a way that will get them elected to a higher office when their term expires or that will get them a cushy job as a lobbyist following their stint in the state capitol. Instead of weighing their conscious before a vote, they weigh their political capital. Gone is the day of bipartisanship, now reigning is a capitol catfight to the top. Any legislator that does get a hang of the system is either swallowed up in partisan games or merely swept out of Lansing thanks to the cap our state has placed on institutional knowledge.

I’ve read in many editorials that Michigan should cut legislative salaries and push a new budget deadline. These solutions won’t save very much money and the bottom line is that they won’t work because they will not create the environment that is needed to pass a budget. While term limits may mix up the legislature every two years, what they also do is block politicians from any opportunity to learn on the job or build any sort of coalition with other representatives beyond party label.

That’s the problem.

At a time when our state faces great crises our politicians must learn to work together. Unless politicians from both sides of the isle learn to cooperate with each other we will continue to see the partisan battles that have taken place over the past decade. If our politicians were smart, they would work together. If voters were smart, they would repeal legislative term limits.

Alexander Morgan blogs regularly at abmichigan.blogspot.com.