| Freep: As Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed final bills Friday to complete the 2009-10 state budget, it seemed Bishop cleaned Dillon's clock. Yet Dillon is hopeful they can rebuild trust. Dillon told the Free Press on Friday that if the budget battle were baseball, "We're only in the sixth inning." He predicts success in coming months to link approval of additional revenue to major changes in state taxing and public employee health benefits. "The real fight is next year, this is all child's play," he warned.
...snip... Dillon said Bishop gave in to a $1.3-billion tax increase in 2007, and he was convinced the Senate leader wouldn't go for another one as he pursues the nomination for attorney general from a Republican Party where the anti-tax right wing will call the shots. "Politically, for him to think he had a future as attorney general, he couldn't allow in the first phase of the budget a tax increase. He needed pressure to build to force a few of his members to break," Dillon said. "That's why I agreed to do what I did."
If either Andy Dillon or Mike Bishop thinks they have a shot at statewide office after this last month, and after two years ago, they're utter frigging idiots. The latest opinion polls gave the state Legislature even worse approval ratings than they have the governor, and suggested that most people blame the Legislature for the budget turmoil. Dillon described this as the sixth inning. On OTR this weekend, the usual gang of pundits called this part of an ongoing process. That means a constant string of reminders that the Legislature just couldn't get its job done on time. The real kicker here is that the Tee Vee stations have been doing a better job of outlining the state budget cuts to local services than have the state's newspapers. Unfortunately for the Lansing political class, this means that the place where people mostly go for their news is telling them just how badly Lansing has sold them out. Next year will not be a good year for incumbents, or legislative leaders looking for a promotion. |
