In an effort to drain the surplus to prevent the automatic state income tax cut, and to spend money faster than a drunken sailor ( and a drunken sailor is spending the sailor's money not other people's) the Michigan Democrats and Whitmer have unveiled a massive spending plan.
The Detroit News: Gov. Whitmer $79B budget plan seeks record school funding, tax relief
Except of course its not universal tax relief, but targeted to her base, with a sop of a $180 check to tax filers but not all taxpayers.
How much spending are we talking about? The spending would leave all of $250 million remaining out of the current $9 billion surplus.
Talk about a spree. One might even say it's a ridiculously irresponsible lack of stewardship of this state's coffers, especially as inflation continues and they chatter about an upcoming recession, and recessions tend to hit Michigan hard.
Funnily enough, her previous urgency to "fix the damn roads" seems rather completely forgotten in her current quest to spend the 9 Billion surplus.
Nothing is announced with fanfare as to extra spending on road fixes from this spree.
Instead, she's hitting all the favored Democrat areas - increasing school funding as well as making a $700 million deposit to the teacher's retirement fund, increasing the earned income tax credit and preventing public pensions from being subject to income tax (but not 401K and most if not all private pensions) - picking winners and losers indeed.
We will note the increased school funding is to fix some of the education and learning lost due to Governor Whitmer's policies of closing the schools during the pandemic:
The budget would include another $300 million for a tutoring program designed to help students who fell behind in school during the pandemic.
Gov Whitmer et a.,l do indeed admit exactly why they're spending all this money and tryign to make the surplus evaporate - including those $180 checks:
The proposal includes the establishment of a new "Michigan Taxpayer Rebate Fund" to receive $800 million in Corporate Income Tax revenue for the purpose of providing $180 rebate payments to income tax filers. Married couples would get $180 combined.
The rebates would prevent an expected cut in the 4.25% personal income tax by dropping state revenues below a threshold that would trigger an automatic rate cut.
So, no tax relief for everyone, only for some, and for one time not moving forward.
Not nearly the opportunity for graft and paying off constituencies for their support if you give everyone tax relief rather than focus on rewarding your contributors and voting blocs.
4 comments:
I just got a snailmail response from my congressman yesterday telling me that the Democrats were not going to do anything to stop the trigger of an income tax cut. I had written to him about several things the budget surplus being one of them.
I am getting kind of shall we say, discouraged about our political parties and the seeming pointlessness of even being involved in the political process. I tend to be more involved in local and state issues as I figure that I have more of an impact there. But it seems like that impact has become unimportant to the whole scheme of things, and that the 2 parties do pretty much what they want, with no concern for the citizens.
Come to real America and get out of that cluster***!
Old NFO,
I know, I would be willing to do so, but as you likely are aware, things are never that simple. It is not easy to just pick up and leave to a different QTH, when you have a wife and a 26 year old daughter who have medical issues. Plus we are all either retired or on disability. And while we have a pretty decent income due to my income during my working years, it is still a fixed income, and so we keep it under control, with no debt.
Myself, I could stand the South West, as I worked in a steel melt shop and was used to heat. My wife however loves the snow and cold. Michigan gives us both, sometimes in the same day.
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