For this week’s blog I want to direct your attention to an interview I gave to Nick of Right Michigan. The article is also available on the Right Michigan website at: http://www.rightmichigan.com/.
Right Michigan: An extended interview with Mike Bishop
We talk so often here about the things that are going wrong in Lansing and what the tax-and-spenders are up to that I think it’s important to check in with the good guys from time to time to get their take on the issues facing taxpayers and the legislature today.
Every week I typically touch base with a member of the House Republican caucus to dig a little deeper into their thoughts and issues than the MSM prefers. This week I figured it was time to touch base with the Senate.
Mid-week I had a chance to sit down for a one-on-one with Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop in his Capitol building office. We discussed candidly everything from the current budget deficit to his relationship with the Governor and potential aspirations for 2010.
And I’ve got to say, I walked away impressed again with this guy’s drive to and stamina in holding back the gates of Dem sponsored hell just itching to break loose on Michigan families.
Interview after the break…
RM: Majority Leader Bishop, thanks for the time. First things first, I’d like to start off asking about this ongoing back and forth capital outlay budget discussion.
Bishop:I would just note that the Democrats have been pushing for $1.8 billion in quote unquote investment in these capital outlay programs so that we can build these new marvelous buildings for our institutions of higher education. Which will probably end up increasing tuition on our students and then blaming us for it, or, specifically me for it.
Senate Republicans said no. We can’t afford it this year. We can’t afford what we have and they want to max out the credit card and push up the limit. They did the equivalent of calling up American Express or Visa and saying “look, we’ve reached our credit max, we’d like to ask you to increase our credit limit.” At a time when we can least afford it. When we see a budget deficit looming.
So we stood up to them and stopped the thing cold in its tracks. Didn’t move it. They then decided to use as a bargaining chip $168 million worth of federal money that was intended to be used by the State of Michigan, for the State of Michigan to use for airport infrastructure. It was a no-brainer. All we had to do was appropriate it, simple as that. But the Democrats in their infinite wisdom on the north side of this Capitol decided to hold hostage the airport funding so they could force us to support their capital outlay programs. Their $1.8 billion in new spending.
We decided to keep on sending them proposals that paired back as best we could, as bare-bones as we could, just the airport projects and that’s it. After a long time of waiting and after numerous demands to the administration they finally decided they can pass the airport dollars. So the airport dollars have been passed by the House–the Governor’s got to get that final job done with her signature–but if it had not been for Senate Republicans this big spending item would have gone right through.
I go back to those 1,200 votes that gave us the majority. But they justify it, number one, all these projects represent friends of theirs so they can feather their nest for them and number two, most importantly, they say that this infusion of government dollars is going to be a huge jump start to the economy because we’re going to pay all these people to build these places. All of a sudden government is responsible to incentivize the economy by way of taxpayer dollars and I refuse to accept that as a legitimate governmental purpose.
I would think the average citizen out there would be completely appalled if they knew what was going on in that House Democrat led chamber and the lack of engagement in the process by our governor.
RM: You mentioned the deficit. Revenues are expected to fall about $472 million short of what we anticipated not too long ago which puts a lot of extra pressure on the this year’s budget process again.
That said there isn’t an impending sense of doom like there was last year. Everyone’s sleeping in their own beds and no one’s camped out in the library. But there’s talk in the House about raising the income tax, raising the gas tax, all sorts of things. I’m hoping and assuming another tax increase is a complete non-starter in the Senate?
Bishop: That’s a very correct assumption. In fact, we advised the Governor on the first of the year that she ought not be making any kind of plans to try and move forward a tax increase. She went to the well too many times last year and we had to fight and fight and fight last year and it really destroyed the entire environment. We actually improved the environment this year because we didn’t have to go through that debate and because we’re forced back to the table with a real discussion of budgeting based on the money we have and not the money we want.
Because last year she kept on saying `we’re going to have this amount of money in the general fund, this is what you can appropriate with.’ The targets were based on this suggested number that really had no connection to reality. We couldn’t put the budget together because she wouldn’t settle upon a number. She wouldn’t certainly settle on what we had in the general fund at the time.
This year’s been a lot better because we’re forced to the table to have a compulsory discussion of what we have, not what we want to have.
RM: But we’ve still got that $400+ in red ink. Things are starting to move fast and furious as far as appropriations bills. Is any of that savings being realized already or are we just getting the easy stuff out of the way and waiting to have that fight weeks, months down the line?
Bishop: There are two things that Senate Republicans are going to do. First, we knew from the beginning that our revenue estimating conference in May would show a shortfall. We also know that in years to come, the next five years there could be up to a three billion dollar shortfall, so this is a real hole. We anticipated that this year so that when the Governor came out with her recommendation we went way low. We shaved off at least $200 million already out of her budget recommendation. We decided not to go with any new programs and some of the spending she proposed. We went with a bare-bones version of a budget that we knew we had to do.
We were fortunate to have done that because we put ourselves in a position so that to finish off that process and address that shortfall is not a problem because we’re already well on our way to getting it done.
Now the second thing we’re doing is introducing more and more reforms. We know that we can control our spending. That’s our responsibility. But we also know that in the future we’re going to have to figure out how to fundamentally change government so that that structural deficit is no longer there. And as it stands, the Governor couldn’t raise taxes fast enough to keep up with the growth of government.
So our goal is to number one, control the spending, and number two reform government to insure we don’t have this problem in the future?
RM: what sorts of reforms are being introduced? Will be introduced?
Bishop: I give Bill Hardiman as an example. This is an individual who has made dramatic reforms in his budget, DHS. He’s working on foster care privatization that would allow the private sector to participate in this process and deliver a better service at a better price. That’s a no brainer. Whenever you trim back government like that you get a lot of push back so that’s a big, big… I admire Bill Hardiman for his integrity on this because he knows it’s the right thing to do and he has really pushed for it.
We’re also looking at substantial reform in Medicaid because that’s one of our biggest cost drivers. Ways to deliver that service at a better price. Technology will help us with that. Privatization will help us in that endeavor as well.
Another of the many reforms is in the area of corrections. We know that that’s one of our fastest growing budgets and one of our most inefficient. It costs us $10,000 more a year per prisoner to house an inmate in our corrections system than it does in Indiana, for example.
RM: Why is that?
Bishop: That’s a good question. The vast majority of our costs in corrections are in the area of salary and wages and that’s a direct reflection on the administration’s lack of effort to address that issue. That is an administrative responsibility to address that issue. The administration and the civil service commission have got to participate to reform that directly.
But what we’re doing on the other side of that is to look for ways to privatize. Transportation, food services, health care are all ripe for that type of reform. We’ve brought in an outside group, CSG, which is auditing our corrections system to give us, based on what other states have done… we’ve asked them to look at other states so we can apply whatever they’ve done here in Michigan. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel, we just want to make it more efficient.
RM: When is that audit due?
Bishop: It’s not due until later this year but we have begun to get recommendations from the group as we move forward. We’re going to try to work on reforms as they surface and get spun out.
And I would say, one other reform that we’re looking at with a lot of promise is the Government Efficiency Commission. We started that last year and it’s made up of non bureaucrat business people who have a specific expertise in management and budget.
These people are well known across the state in those areas and they’re going to give us an objective third party audit of government from a business person’s perspective. I’ve had interaction with the person I put on the commission very frequently and they are coming up with some great ideas. It’s our responsibility in government to move on that as soon as they establish those recommendations.
RM: Let me go back really quickly to the corrections issue. The Governor’s answer seems to be just letting people out early. Is that on the table?
Bishop: That’s interesting because the Governor in order I believe to defuse the momentum Senate Republicans were getting on repealing the surcharge on the MBT rolled out an idea to make changes to the corrections system that would pay for a repeal or a partial repeal of the surcharge. I believe the proposal was intended to frustrate the ongoing dialogue about the repeal of the surcharge.
We’ve already gone down this path. The Governor has never clearly articulated her proposal. All we can figure is that number one, we release certain as she calls them non-violent offenders. She’s never given us a definition of what a non-violent offender is and how we would identify those individuals.
If you got into the prison system you had to do something to get there and it had to be substantial. In my mind I don’t know how you come up with that list of acceptable felons to release.
But she also wants to amend the sentencing guidelines which would have an impact on the total number of people in the system. We have 60,000 people in the system right now, one of the highest in the Midwest, but the problem is when you mess with the sentencing guidelines and you send someone with, say, a one-year minimum sentence into the jail system all you’re doing is shifting the burden from the state to the locals.
Sheriffs in our communities who constantly have to let people out of the jail… they meet regularly and have to release prisoners… it’ll blow the system.
So she didn’t really think it through. I don’t even think it’s an honest and real proposal. In my mind it was just a ruse to take our focus away from getting rid of that surcharge in the MBT.
RM: Have you been distracted? Or is a repeal of the surcharge still a possibility?
Bishop: It’s a possibility. We put our committee together to review the concerns with the MBT and we know it’s an uphill battle for us to get the governor to agree to repeal the surcharge simply because she would also have to agree to a commensurate reduction in a budget somewhere unless we shift that burden onto another tax.
Our recommendation was not a shift but a complete repeal with, as I said earlier, a commensurate reduction and the difficult part is that we have to reduce the state budget by $400 million this year because of the shortfall and it’s hard at the same time to get them to agree to another $400-500 million that would accommodate the repeal of the surcharge.
RM: So the difficulty isn’t in finding the cuts and reforms. The difficulty is in getting the administration to go along with that level of cut.
Bishop: Right. I try to remind people of this as often as I can. If we had a magic wand and we could do the things we wanted to do we’d see a significant reduction in the tax burden. They would see a massive reduction in the size of government if the Republican Senate had control of the system. But since we’re only one third of the process, whatever proposals we create have got to be supported by the House and signed by the Governor.
So we’ve got to find a way to negotiate outcomes. I think we’ve been very successful in negotiating an outcome of reducing the size of government, making it more efficient and reducing our expenditures.
Assuming we continued the cuts the Senate GOP passed last year we’d be running a surplus. That’s why it’s so important for people to understand the importance of electing people who have a mindset of reducing the size of government. Because the moment you get sucked into this process and can only see ways to give, give, give–and that’s sort of a disease around here, members sometimes don’t like to stick their heads outside the Capitol Loop and see what’s going on around the State. All they want to do is feed the beast. And if we don’t keep a constant guard in this place it will balloon out of control.
RM: And the House took a vote and shot down those Senate cuts?
Bishop: It was a staged joke. They literally took a legislative analysis at the last second and entered it as if it were some sort of legislative document. There are drafted documents we’re supposed to use but they just took any document, it was a list of all the cuts, and they threw it into an amendment and brought it up for a vote. No one knew what it really was. They just staged a vote. A Democratic playbook move.
RM: How do you get along with the Governor? Tim Skubick says you and Andy Dillon get along alright but the two of you are sort of on your own without the Governor’s help.
Bishop: The Governor is not a hands on administrator. She’s more reactive than proactive. That would be my complaint. That to me is not the way to run the State. We need bold leadership that’s willing to step up and lead in a difficult situation. This is a crisis situation. I don’t sense there is an effort anywhere in the administration to assume the role of a crisis manager.
So, Tim Skubick is correct, we don’t speak a lot. Some of that has to do with the fact that she’s been ill, and I don’t want to discount the severity of what she just went through, but we have never really had the kind of constant dialogue that’s necessary to get ideas on the table and a strategy in place. I just don’t think she’s engaged.
I went through the Engler administration and there’s such a stark difference between the two. All of us in the legislature had some point in time when we crossed paths with John Engler. You either agreed with him or disagreed with him and he would spar with you on any given point. Because he knew what was in every bill in every dark corner of the Capitol. I guess I never truly appreciated that until he was gone.
We now have an administrator who doesn’t know what’s in the legislative system until it gets to her desk.
RM: Senator McManus is holding a hearing here soon about some… problems… a few Democratic members in the Senate seemed to have had keeping up with campaign finance rules and regulations. When is that hearing happening and what are Senate Republicans looking at exactly?
Bishop: It’s not exactly just looking at Democrats in the House or the Senate. It’s a discussion about what’s going on with campaign finance. What are the outstanding complaints that are out there and not resolved. It just so happens that the vast majority of complaints are the result of Senate Democrats from the last election.
Some of them are egregious. Some of them need to be addressed, there’s no question about it. The role of the committee in this case is not to resolve those complaints but to make sure that illegal activity doesn’t happen again.
If we don’t draw awareness to it and if we don’t insist upon a final ruling on it it’ll only repeat itself in the future. There are some misunderstandings in the law as far as some of the members of this legislative body are concerned. We’ve got to resolve them. We have to come to peace with them and give direction for the future of this system or we’ll continue to have problems.
RM: Are you running for Attorney General in 2010?
Bishop: I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m at the point now where I’m term limited and options are out there that I will review and decide upon. I’m the kind of person who got into this because I believe in the principles of being involved in government.
I don’t think that I have to land another office to uphold those principles of staying involved. And I’m young enough now that I can go back to doing what I was doing before. That’s the great part about the world we live in is that you can always go back to the private sector. It’s one of those options you don’t get with every country. Our politics are such that a person can enter the system and be an active, positive member and then move back out into the private sector and be productive there as well.
I will look at options in elected government in the future. Attorney General is one of those options I will look at. I’m extremely interested in that option. I believe I’m well suited for it. I’ve got the background for it. I’ve had experience in prosecution and consumer law and it’s really been my focus in the legislature so far to protect the consumer. I believe I would thrive in that department, but having served in the Legislature for nearly a decade, I still feel I have much more to offer. Working under Democratic control has been challenging and frustrating and if there is an opportunity to lead the Executive branch in the future I would consider that option with equal vigor. I love Michigan and I want this state to be the place my children choose to stay and raise their families.
We’ll assess it as we go forward and as that date gets closer make a determination.
RM: The last couple of years haven’t soured you on public service?
Bishop: No, in fact I would say the last couple of years, as tumultuous as the experience has been the last couple of years, and there have been dark moments where I’ve been buried in this Capitol feeling like I’m stuck in the Alamo, waiting for the cavalry to arrive– we’ve been doing the best we can to mitigate the damage– but I am so convinced that I’m here for a purpose. I am now more than ever convinced that we have a purpose in the place.
Senate Republicans, we won by 1,200 votes and if we didn’t have those extra 1,200 votes to win the majority in the Senate this State would look fundamentally different than it does right now.
The people of the state might not know it but last year alone the House Democrats moved $4 billion in tax increases. In their first year in the majority. If it had not been for the stop-gap, the insulation provided by the Senate Republicans, the vast majority of the stuff would have moved right through here on its way to the governor and she would have happily signed it all.
And it’s not just tax increases, its increases in the size of government. It’s anti-business legislation that really is consistent with all of their special interest groups that govern their agenda. This group is run by interest groups. The only hope we have in the State right now in the way of limited government is with the Senate Republicans. We have assumed that responsibility and we are glad to do it.
So to answer your question, no, it hasn’t soured me. I am far more energized by this job than I have ever been because I know we have a purpose.
RM: Let’s say you could accomplish specific agenda items this year, if you found a genie or a magic wand, what would those items be?
Bishop: If I could wave my wand, the surcharge would be first on my list to delete. I would look forward in the Senate to moving our proposal to reduce the size of government in a commensurate way to insure we could afford that cut. But delivering that sort of instant infusion of incentive to businesses in this State would make a huge difference. A huge difference.
It drives me crazy to think its right there at our fingertips and we could do it if we just decided to do it. The fact that the administration has not taken it upon itself to insist upon it drives me crazy and we’ve got to push for that. If I had one wish, that would be one.
Second would be to be able to put full support behind and insure both sides of the legislature would support the government efficiency commission report. If we could all accept what they recommend and move that quickly. Because I think that would have an impact of reducing the size of government instantaneously and it would resolve so much of the structural problem we have in this State.
We have other issues that need to be addressed too. Our individual health care market has got to be addressed. We have a shrinking economy and more individuals being dropped off company programs and business provided health care. They’re left to their own devices to find a way to insure they can afford health care for themselves and their families. We’ve got to learn to control the cost of health care in this country and in this State. I would like to have an environment here where people are willing to work together to find a solution to that.
And then we have energy reform that we’re working on. We’re looking for safe, reliable, sustainable energy for the future of Michigan?
RM: What do you think about the big energy re-monopolization scheme?
Bishop: First of all, I don’t believe in re-monopolization. I just don’t think that’s anything that either chamber has fully embraced. I do believe that competition is good for this state and I believe we ought to be encouraging competition in this state. We’ve got to make sure we have investment into base-load power production so that we’re prepared for our needs in the future. We’ve really neglected that.
There’s been no investment in base-load power production by our utilities in forty-plus years and we’re a ticking time bomb right now and we’ve got to address it. And we’ve got to do it right away and stop talking about it. Energy is a huge cost driver in this State. If you look at any business in this or other states around the country they will list energy as one of their top five cost concerns. That, health care, taxes and some of the other issues. So those are big areas of concern.
RM: Senate Majority Leader Bishop, thanks again for the time!
