“We saved small businesses tonight. It may not have been pretty, but we did it,” said Markkanen, R-Hancock. “When you think about U.P. businesses, nearly every one of them would qualify as small. We don’t have the huge corporate chains that you see downstate, it’s not how we do business. The protections we passed tonight are important for all of Michigan, but they will be the difference between life and death for our U.P. communities who simply wouldn’t have survived under the conditions the Supreme Court tried imposing on us.”

“I represent three quarters of the Upper Peninsula counties that share a border with Wisconsin,” said Markkanen, R-Hancock. “Wisconsin already has an advantage over us in the bar and restaurant industry because the regulations there are so much more friendly. Doing nothing to restore the tip credit will be the kiss of death on service jobs just north of the border. The small businesses and jobs across the entirety of the U.P. won’t last much longer after that.”