LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – While important issues are needing to be discussed and voted on, the Michigan House is spending some of their time introducing resolutions like “Public Schools Week” and “Athletic Trainer Month.”

On March 1st alone, Michigan House members brought five resolutions to the floor. Since the beginning of 2023, the 19th Michigan House Journal, a journal documenting their legislative sessions, shows that they are already on their 49th resolution. In 2022, there were 198.

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Many other House resolutions have been introduced in the past month including Agriculture Month, Endometriosis Awareness Day, a resolution to Honor the Courage of the Ukrainian people, Conductive Education Day, School-Based Health Care Awareness Day, and Rare Disease Day.

In addition to declaring days, weeks and months to observe, there are also times when politicians introduce resolutions to honor or acknowledge events like the Michigan State shooting. House resolution No. 36 was a resolution of “tribute to express our condolences for the tragic shooting at Michigan State University.” Although irrelevant as far as the resolution doing anything substantive, it was a way for the politicians to show their constituents their awareness and acknowledgement of an event that happened in the state.

In a document prepared by the Michigan legislature in 2019 titled “For the People, by the People – How State and Local Governments Operate” it defines a resolution as a “document expressing the opinion or will of the House or the Senate (or both, in the case of concurrent resolutions). Resolutions are used to conduct certain legislative business or formal communicate positions on an issue.”

If you read through the resolutions over the years, you will see that they are usually partisan statements to support concurrent legislation, support of people or issues the politicians in power approve of, declarations of their thoughts about an event, or reiteration statement of a national event like Black History Month. Resolutions are also used to get politicians on record about issues or events, often before legislation is introduced on the same subject matter.

The Michigan Senate also passes resolutions. Currently, the Michigan Senate is on their 13th resolution. They had 100 resolutions in 2022, their last one reaffirming support for Michigan businesses by encouraging the state to direct “as many procurement dollars as possible to Michigan-based businesses.”

Besides separate House and Senate resolutions, there are also concurrent resolutions which are described by the Michigan Legislature as resolutions that go before both chambers. Additionally, there are joint resolutions which they point out as being used “almost exclusively to propose amendments to the Michigan Constitution.”

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Other departments of the Michigan government have also released their own resolutions including the State Board of Education who announced a sex education resolution on Valentine’s Day of this year that praised school districts for offering sex education curriculum and allowed parents and guardians to opt their children out of sex education classes. They have also released resolutions concerning Teachers of the Year, mask mandates and resolutions honoring board members.

The Department of Technology, Management & Budget has also released resolutions and so has the Michigan Civil Rights Commission which released a resolution in “support of reproductive rights” in July of 2022.

The state of Michigan is not alone in wasting time on resolutions, however. Other states do it too and Congress also loves to get into the act.

In 2007, Congress “overwhelmingly” passed “National Boating Day” in both the House and Senate. In the past, they have also passed a resolution recognizing National Homeownership Month and more recently in February, the House passed resolutions supporting the Boy Scouts of America and condemning China’s spy balloon.

On February 3rd, the Republican-led Congress introduced a House resolution on the horrors of socialism. It was, one could surmise, the straw that broke the Democrats’ camel’s back on what they consider to be meaningless and time-consuming resolutions.

Democratic Representative Jim McGovern is reported to have said during a floor debate about the resolution on Wednesday, “The socialism resolution is useless. It does nothing. It does not matter…Are we talking about public schools? Are we talking about roads? Are we talking about Social Security? I mean, give me a break.”

The resolution, regardless of its partisan criticism, passed on Thursday with a 328-86 vote. All Republicans voted in favor of the resolution and 86 Democrats voting against it including Michigan Democrat Reps Sri Thanedar and Rashida Tlaib as well as the group that is referred to as “The Squad” – Cori Bush, Aranna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Ocasio-Cortez.

This kind of resolution, as was described earlier in the article, was one in which one party wanted to get another party on record about a certain subject. And their objective was accomplished.