House Minority Leader: “I’ll keep knocking on the door until they let me in”

Posted on January 31, 2023
House Minority Leader Tony McCombie (R-Savanna). (Photo courtesy: Dave Dahl/WJBC)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – “I’ll keep knocking on the door until they let me in.”

That’s how House Minority Leader Tony McCombie (R-Savanna), on the job for less than a month, says she’ll get the superminority party involved in budget negotiations, in contrast to annual complaining by her predecessors that the GOP is left out.

McCombie and other House Republicans, holding a Capitol news conference Tuesday morning, insisted on creating a balanced budget from a revenue estimate. But there is more than one estimate.

“We can look at all of those,” said State Rep. Norine Hammond (R-Macomb), the House Republican “budgeteer.” “We can land somewhere in the middle as a starting point that will probably be pretty spot-on for where we anticipate being.”

As for a requirement for a balanced budget – well, that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].

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