Especially, that is, in Lansing. You may have been a little preoccupied with General Motors falling apart and Chrysler going bankrupt. And perhaps you haven’t had a chance to keep up with our elected leaders’ latest attempts to take us over a cliff.
But that’s what I’m here for, right? First of all, there‘s a big difference between state government and the auto companies.
Chrysler and GM have admitted they have serious, life-threatening problems. They are now making some very painful decisions to try and save themselves.
Which puts them way ahead of our lawmakers. Tuesday, Governor Jennifer Granholm’s office said we had a budget deficit of about $785 million dollars for the year ending Sept. 30. She plans to issue an executive order making some spending cuts next Tuesday. Not enough cuts to cover the shortfall, but just a little bit to start.
Now, I am not an accountant, but I knew immediately that the deficit had to be far larger than they were saying. Every month, the money the state takes in falls more than $100 million short of projections. And guess what.
Sure enough, the very next day state leaders let it slip that the actual deficit now looks to be almost twice that much. Maybe, $1.2 billion. Did the governor immediately come out with a plan?
Did she address the taxpayers and say, here’s what we have to do about this? Come on. That would take leadership. Now, Senate Republicans did come out with a plan for savings on prisons.
Trouble is, they did it with their ideological blinders on, which means they can’t support letting anybody out early, which is really the only way to save money. So they babbled about privatization and teleconferenced hearings to save transportation costs.
Even they didn’t attempt to put a dollar amount on how much this would save, mainly because it would be essentially nothing. The best comment was made by State Senator Alma Wheeler Smith, who said she preferred reality-based reforms.
Here’s why all this avoidance of reality is both disgraceful and dangerous. Michigan, unlike the federal government, has to balance its budget. Now we‘ve already spent well over half the money we planned on this fiscal year.
As time goes on, the politicians are more and more likely to have only two options, both of them bad. They’ll have to use all our federal stimulus dollars, which they aren’t supposed to do, and they’ll have to cut education, which will help make sure we don’t have a future. Here’s a radical idea. How about if we ask them to, just for once, work for the common good for the rest of this year?
Then, next year, when there is an election, we’ll let them go back to playing silly political games.
They won’t like that, but we can say, hey. That’s a better deal than Chrysler got. Not to mention what you’ve been giving us.
What? Now, you don't think a statewide smoking ban isn't going help our state balance its budget or create jobs?
Since you're dumping on our state legislature and we haven't seen a Gov't reform proposal from them or our Gov since she moved to Lansing (other than give money to Hollywood). How's this idea?
Why does Michigan (or any state) need a Bi-carmel legislature? Along with the cost of all the extra bodies. Throw them all in one bucket keep only the state legislative seat districts and let both the Sens and the Reps fight it out for the remaining seats! Not only will we save all that money, it will be great sport!
Posted by: Matt | May 02, 2009 at 11:02 AM
I hope our state does use the stimulus money to balance the budget.
I do not buy the hype that using the money will not solve any future structual fiscal issues...
Who cares about the fiction of future fiscal budgets...I want to deal with the present reality state fiscal shortcomings..
I reject the tired notion of let's used the stimulus money for everything but budget shortfalls..I also reject the notion that stimulous money should be given to education before other concerns.. Why?
Education is a overated and clearly given the credentials of those on Wall St and in our federal and state captials also not proof that being educated means better quality , better thinkers, better leaders etc.
Money is to be spent now not later..
Posted by: Thrasher | May 04, 2009 at 12:27 PM