If anything, Majority Leader Randy Richardville said, he saved Gov. Rick Snyder from a big defeat more than two weeks ago by not calling a vote on House legislation to expand eligibility for government-provided health insurance to 320,000 low-income adults in 2014. The Republican governor had cut short a trade trip in Israel to return home and lobby the GOP-dominated Senate.

"I think he was convinced that the votes were there. I'm in the room where those votes get counted," Richardville, of Monroe, told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday, the day he outlined his expectations for a Senate workgroup that will study Medicaid expansion this summer.

"This debate, this issue, is alive because I provided leadership on this issue based on the feedback from the Senate Republican caucus. This thing was dead if we had taken a vote when it was being demanded that we take a vote. It wasn't a gentle request. There was a demand and then after the demand there was a - they called it a press conference. I've got other words to describe it, but I'm not going to use them."

Give him credit - he came through, we read.  A special thank you, we read.