Gov. Gretchen Whitmer unveiled the details Tuesday of what I believe is the best, boldest, and most sensible state budget proposal in many years. Michigan has the worst roads in the country, and her budget offers the necessary funding to fix them.
Michigan’s public school students are in the bottom third of the nation in terms of achievement, and reading and math test scores are especially abysmal. This isn’t all that surprising, when you consider that spending for public education has grown less here than in any other state in the union over the last quarter century. Add to that the fact that legislative Republicans have done everything they could in recent years to ruin the teaching profession.
Whitmer’s budget addresses that too. Not only does it increase the per-pupil foundation allowance for all students, it allocates more money to students and schools that need them most.
Her budget ends the practice of funding community colleges with the school aid fund, and instead provides new funding to reimburse school districts for special education and for career and technical education. Plus, there’s more than $100 million in new money to help academically at-risk and economically disadvantaged students, who often are the same kids.
There are other good things too, from new money to ensure clean water to technological improvements for the Department of Corrections. But the really big things here are the schools and the roads, areas where new spending is very much needed.
The problem, however, is this: Can she get the legislature to go along?
Whitmer was elected by a landslide last fall, and made it clear during her campaign that she expected to raise taxes for the roads and spend more on schools. Michigan citizens also cast more votes for Democratic candidates for both houses of the legislature.
But thanks to outrageous gerrymandering, Republicans still have solid control of both the Michigan House and the Michigan Senate. Previously, the GOP leadership in both houses indicated they knew that new tax revenue would be needed, at least for the roads, which are going to need a new $2.6 billion a year for at least a decade. But after the budget proposal became public, a bunch of cranky Republicans denounced it because, yes, it raises taxes.
“Tax increases aren’t solutions,” one Republican huffed.
Well, guess what. Sometimes they are. Oxygen didn’t paint the Mona Lisa either, but Michelangelo would have a hard time functioning without it.
Previously, a number of Republicans indicated they knew major tax increases were necessary, but yesterday, they seemed to have developed cold feet.
Tom Watkins, a former state superintendent of schools who currently is helping run a school in China, wrote me “the opposition to Gov. Whitmer’s tax proposal to ‘fix the damn roads’ reminds me of the song, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die.”
Watkins added, “Someone has to pay for the neglect and lack of investment in our infrastructure!” Well, of course they do – we all do.
Governor Whitmer, who served herself in both the Michigan House and Senate, added that she knew raising taxes is politically hard, but added, “the worst vote a legislator can take is a vote that proposes to solve a problem but doesn’t actually fix it.”
We’ve had way too many of those. We are on the edge of an abyss in this state: We can sacrifice to fix the roads, bridges and schools, or we can doom Michigan, ourselves and our kids to an economically hopeless future for generations to come. It really isn’t much of a choice at all.
