Just practically speaking, you're talking word limits or page lay-outs if you're slapping it into a graph.  

But yeah, your point's well taken.  That's not a good excuse.  

I think for the most part you've got two or three specific dynamics at play (and I aknowledge right up front I could be way off here... I've never been a newspaper reporter).

1) A lot of news outlets just do NOT do their due dilligence in researching what someone in Lansing gives them.  When I was at the House doing press work there was a sort of unwritten rule... tailor your press release so that papers out-state can just grab it and go.  

Every week there'd be a story in the clips somewhere in the state that printed one of our press releases verbatim.  

Whether they don't realize they're being given a partisan viewpoint or just don't care that they might be spun I don't know.  There are deadlines to meet and space to fill and all sorts of other pressures that could lead to something like that... I never want to call someone lazy if I can help it.

2) An overwhelming majority of journalists describe themselves as liberal or left-leaning.  I think in large part they do a decent job of keeping that bias from seeping directly into their reporting but there are times it will, despite their best efforts, affect their coverage.  After all, they're only human.

While it may not lead to a sentence like "Governor Granholm is right and the Republicans are wrong" it very well might color the way they hear what Governor Granholm or Mike Bishop say about an issue.  And that can be reflected in their work from time to time.

3) The MSM is driven by sensationalism.  It just plain is.  And Jennifer Granholm knows how to play to her crowd.  Don't forget, she's a trained actress.  So she can stare into a camera and convey this really pissed off sorta vibe and say something snarky about the legislature and that's going to lead the news.  That's your soundbyte.  That's your repeating clip that makes it into circulation during hourly updates on your local station.

Focus groups and consultants tell media outlets that consumers want sports and weather and human interest stories so we've seen a steady decline in political reporting.  Often times those with the best soundbytes get the most coverage.

Obviously there could be hundreds of other explanations but I think in this case it's a mix of these three.  

The cuts they agreed on they've already put through together and the Governor's said she'll sign them.

I do understand the difference between the GF/GP and School Aid Fund budgets.

I also understand the concept that money is fungible.  That means that by cutting $200 million from the GF/GP you can then use legislate a transfer of that money into the school aid fund.  

They don't print money at the US Treasury with little markings on it that say where each individual unique dollar bill has to be spent.  

Therefore...

It solves that many dollars worth of the problem before it even becomes a problem.

Community Health: $85 million of the cuts are in federal funds which means they are restricted. They can't be spent elsewhere, like on schools.

Corrections: The Senate didn't cut, it added $20 million.

DHS: Ditto - the Sentate added $22 million.

DLEG: Again, the Senate added $11 million - all restricted so if they were cut, they couldn't be used elsewhere.

State Police - The Senate cut $1.5 million, not $4 million.

So not only is there not hundreds of millions in cuts, some of what you counted as cuts were actually additions to the budget.

You also stated that there was no overlap between the two. How can you tell? Many of the House cuts aren't specifically identified by line-item. So they may be different amounts for the same item.

(X)

represent cuts from the current budget.

The cuts are there.  Going over them again... you cited Corrections, for instance...

See Sec. 106 of the Senate Bill:

Add all the cuts together and you've got $5,848,000 in savings.  

Ditto the others.  The numbers are right.  The cuts are there.  Not sure where you're missing them.  Just make sure you're looking at the numbers surrounded by parentheses.  

As for your point about the House, you're right, they didn't make line item notations.  But the amounts they've cut are in almost every case varied from the Senate cuts.  Also, the areas where the two sides agreed... they've already passed that stuff on to the Governor.  (Remember the $300 million from two weeks ago?)

First, when the Senate proposes cutting federal funding, as it did with Community Health, you can't claim that the money is available for school aid funds. Those funds (and other funds as noted in the bill) are restricted to those purposes. They can't be shifted to school aid or for any other purposes. Right off the top, you have to subtract those from your totals.

So only $500 million of those are able to be passed along directly to the school aid fund?  Big deal?  The Governor's threatening a $300 million cut to SAF and Medicaid.  

A slash and burn tactic that doesn't need to be used because A) there are bipartisan cuts out there in conference committee right now and B) her numbers look like they're off now too.  Her doomsday scenario isn't even going to play out.

You can call argue all day long that the politics of this or that won't allow the legislature to actually pass all $591 million worth of budget cuts spelled out in those bills but that doesn't change the fact that they exist.  And at one point, whatever the thinking was, they won the votes of a majority of the members of the respective chambers.

You can try to muddy up the issue all you want but it doesn't change the facts.  Pesky thing, those.

Not that I understand why you'd want to muddy up an issue like this.  Apparantly it's one of the issues you agree with the Governor on.  So you'd rather cut $10 million from school districts than cut $10 million from the lottery advertising budget?

Alright, that's your opinion and your perogative.  Just don't try to paint yourself or the governor as a great defender of public education.