• House Republicans cut $645 million in state funding from ongoing projects in a rare move
  • GOP legislative leaders said the cuts were to combat government waste and force Democrats to negotiate
  • Democrats lambasted the cuts to key programs as cold-hearted and ‘corrupt’

LANSING — The Republican-controlled state House budget committee canceled nearly $645 million in funding for state departments’ projects heading into 2026, arguing departments have been “squirreling away” funding into “slush funds.”

The committee leveraged a relatively obscure provision in state law that allowed them to lapse the funding without buy-in from the state Senate, which is currently controlled by Democrats. 

Rather than cutting funding, the committee — through a party-line vote and no discussion — technically disapproved requests from the State Budget Office to continue funding on a litany of ongoing work projects. 

House Speaker Matt Hall said the cuts were part of a larger campaign to rein in the size of state government. He also acknowledged, however, that “not everything that the Appropriations Committee cut was waste, fraud and abuse” and that the move was in part a negotiating tactic for future spending bills. Some of the projects that lost funding could get it back again, Hall added.

“It’s the end of the fiscal year and you haven’t spent it … let’s block (funding for) it,” Hall, a Richland Township Republican, told reporters after the vote. “Let’s put (the funding back) in the general fund, and then let’s force a discussion about what is the best way to get value for your tax dollars.” 

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Democrats lambasted the maneuver.

“There’s a special place in hell for someone willing to yank money away from moms and babies 15 days before Christmas,” said Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks. “I hope Matt Hall takes this holiday season to look within himself and reevaluate what exactly he’s doing here.”

House Budget Chair Ann Bollin said “there really was nothing to discuss” ahead of the vote, responding to protests from Democrats who had only minutes to review a list of cuts.

What was cut

The disapprovals cut across state departments and types of programs. Among the slashed funding included: 

  • $18.5 million in funding for RxKids, a cash-grant program for pregnant women and new mothers. 
  • Grant funding for the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. 
  • $56,600 to provide wigs to Michiganders undergoing cancer treatment.
  • A $2.5 million pilot study for traffic cameras in school zones.
  • $1.3 million in funding for the Office of Global Michigan.
  • $1.9 million in grants to symphony orchestras

The largest single disapproval was $159 million for the Make It In Michigan Competitiveness Fund, an economic development program championed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to secure federal funding from legislation like the CHIPS Act. Hall said the Whitmer administration could instead use existing funds to secure the match federal dollars.

Republican members of the budget committee spent hours behind closed doors privately deliberating which projects should face the chopping block ahead of the full committee vote Wednesday.

“This is some corrupt bullshit,” Rep. Jason Morgan, an Ann Arbor Democrat, said after the vote. “I think this is a completely untransparent process.”

The day before, Rep. Thomas Kuhn’s budget subcommittee on general government was the only one to meet and discuss the prospective funding cuts in public. Kuhn, a Troy Republican, said he wanted to explain his recommendations for which projects should see funding cuts. 

Among them was the sexual assault and law enforcement program in the Department of Attorney General. It uses funding to assist with ongoing investigations, prosecutions and victim services in cases stemming from a backlog of unprocessed “rape kits” in five different counties, according to the House Fiscal Agency.

“It seems to be run well and they’re doing a lot of stuff there,” Kuhn said of the program, but concluded it was “way over-funded” and noted they had gotten additional appropriations in more recent budgets.

That program was ultimately not cut in the full committee meeting Wednesday. 

How the cuts were made

Ending funding for the projects is possible thanks to a quirk of the state’s Management and Budget Act. 

The State Budget Office, which is controlled by Whitmer, can extend the funding provided to them via a request letter to the House and Senate’s budget committees. If the committees don’t act, the funding is automatically carried over to future years. But if either chamber’s committee explicitly disapproves work projects, the money is sent back to the state’s general fund.

The use of disapproval this week, however, was the first in memory for many in the 40 years since the law was written, including during stretches when both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s executive branch were held by different parties. 

Bollin, the House budget chair, argued the funding cuts were “an opportunity for oversight” so the Legislature can take a more active role in monitoring the spending of taxpayer dollars.

While about $351 million will return to the general fund and still be available to the Legislature to appropriate, another $245 million comes from a variety of other sources and $48 million is in the form of federal funding, which may not be as easy to access again. 

Rep. Samantha Steckloff, a Farmington Hills Democrat whose district is home to the Zekelman Holocaust Center, was left despondent by the cuts, noting the cut is being made at a time when “we’re seeing an increase in antisemitic attacks, when we’re seeing a rise in Holocaust denialism.”

The funding disapprovals required lawmakers to slash funding across broad categories of support, rather than individual grants. Hall indicated some of it came down to preference.

“I’d rather they give a million dollars to the Grand Rapids art museum, or maybe the Holocaust museum, than give 80 grants out to all these different glass blowing associations that we don’t even know what the hell the use is,” Hall said.

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