A pox on ALL their houses…

Last Thursday, I wrote about the how legislators appear to be stealing each others legislation in order to get credit for something that seems to have widespread support in a piece titled “Michigan Republicans stealing bills introduced by Democrats to deny them legislative victories”. After writing it, I updated later when I learned the Democrats steal legislation, too, and posted about my frustration that good, bipartisan legislation is getting polluted by the politics of who gets credit.

It appears that the situation is even more complicated than I first realized. As it turns out, the legislation that Democrat David Knezek apparently had stolen from him by Republican Jim Stamas is identical to legislation that Stamas himself introduced or supported in the two previous legislative sessions and that Knezek himself lifted the language verbatim from them.

More after the jump.

If you can’t win on your own ideas, steal someone else’s

Michigan Republicans have made it patently clear that they have no intention of letting Democrats score any legislative victories whatsoever. In the recent House appropriations legislation debates, for example, Democrats introduced over 70 amendments and every single one of them was shot down by the House Republicans. But even Republicans don’t think that EVERY idea that Democrats have is a bad one. It’s just not something they want the rest of Michigan to believe. So, in order to deny Democrats any legislative victories in the current session, Republicans have begun using an approach that I haven’t heard of before: introducing legislation that is identical to a bill that was introduced by a Democrat and then supporting that one instead.