4th of July: Founding Fathers Turning Over In Their Graves
Yesterday, we celebrated our nation's Independence Day. This holiday is always a great opportunity to look back on the sacrifices our Founding Fathers made to establish a nation independent from foreign control. As I sat on the House floor last week listening to the myriad of speeches attempting to defend the record taxpayer-funded $82 billion dollar state budget, one thing became very clear: our government prioritizes special interest projects above the interests of Michigan residents.
Budget details were negotiated in a closed-doors "Conference Committee", which negated any opportunity for engagement in the drafting process before the set-in-stone final draft was presented to the legislative chamber. Furthermore, this 1,000+ page budget (with $82 billion in government spending) was presented to lawmakers less than 2 hours before the vote. This gave us very little time to review budget line items, assess what's missing, look at the rationale for spending proposals, ask questions and see how these programs have fared in the past year. As I reviewed our state budget, I saw some glaring deficiencies:
Many of the new government programs would add approximately 1,000 bureaucrats to the payroll – all at the expense of Michigan taxpayers
The budget contains nearly $1 billion in special projects for lawmaker districts – with only generic descriptions on what the money will be used for or which lawmaker put in the request for funding. It was not disclosed which lawmaker put in which request for funding.
The 2023-2024 budget is not sustainable. It represents a 40 percent increase in government spending since 2019 – even though state government has nearly $30 billion in debt.
It does not address the backlog of deferred infrastructure maintenance. They should have used part of the budget surplus to pay down Michigan’s debt and allocate more money to highways and bridges maintained by MDOT that are rapidly deteriorating.
They removed a prohibition on vaccine passports, which was in the 2022 budget. Section 224 was not included in this year’s version.
They removed free speech protection requirements for college campuses. These were in last year’s budget, but it didn’t make it into this year’s version.
Taxpayers will now be funding “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” officers. These positions will be used to advance liberal agendas in public settings – all funded with your tax dollars.
They removed a section that prohibited the health department from using taxpayer money to fund elective abortions.
They added a section within the budget bill to prohibit state departments from interfering with any efforts to exercise “reproductive freedom.”
Backroom deals were negotiated in exchange for votes before session. They included countless projects to benefit lawmaker districts to ensure House passage and Governor’s signature.
This bloated budget prioritizes gimmicks over long-term solutions. Where is the plan to pay down approximately $30 billion in government debt? Address the big backlog of deferred infrastructure maintenance? Reduce government bureaucracy, so government services (e.g. Secretary of State offices) are more efficient and productive? I could not in good conscience support a budget not likely to deliver results – and does away with essential checks and balances to protect Michigan residents from massive government overreach.
As your State Representative, I’m working hard to warn others of the potential consequences of these bad policies, although it’s definitely an uphill battle.