Michigan Republican state representative aims to censure House Speaker Joe Tate
LANSING, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - Republican state Rep. Steve Carra introduced a resolution on Tuesday to censure Michigan Speaker of the House Joe Tate over what he calls "racist language" in the state budget.
"Now, I thought we had learned as a society that things so abhorrent is saying that a drinking fountain can only be used by certain people based on the color of their skin is reprehensible," said Carra, a member of the Michigan Freedom Cacaus. "Yet here in our budget process, we have a quarter million, a half million dollar grant program to hand out to certain specific small business owners based on the qualification of the color of their skin."
Carra argued that it is racist that the state budget includes grant funding only for minority-owned businesses. He called out Speaker Tate for supporting the state budget and also called attention to the treatment of fellow Republican lawmaker Josh Schriver.
Schriver was stripped of his committee assignments in February after retweeting a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, about the "Great Replacement" theory, which is a racist idea that the white population is being replaced by non-white people.
"The leader of this Chamber, the House, is the Speaker of the House. We have the power of the purse, and Speaker Tate should have, as the leader, not brought forward a budget bill that had racism in it," said Carra. "I think that free markets and equal opportunity and treating people properly regardless of the color of their skin is the correct way to treat people moving forward. Because someone being treated wrongfully or their relative treated wrongfully 100 years ago is no reason to try to do this type of process moving forward."
CBS News Detroit reached out to the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office for comment on the budget but did not hear back. When asked, Speaker Tate said he wouldn't comment on the resolution to censure him as he hasn't had a chance to read it just yet.
