Governor Whitmer’s Solution to ‘Fix the Damn Roads’? Raise Your Taxes. 

Michigan’s Governor wants to raise taxes again: is anyone surprised?  

If one must spend their money on frivolous things, they should at least have their house in order. This seemingly obvious piece of conventional wisdom is difficult for Democrats to accept. For example, one might think that before spending billions in wasteful corporate welfare programs, a state ought to have functioning roads. Unfortunately, Governor Whitmer wants to have her cake and eat it too.  

According to data from the Transportation Asset Management Council, 37% of Michigan’s roads are in poor condition, a number that’s slated to rise more than 10 percentage points in the coming years.  

For many, this statistic might be a wake-up call, especially after Governor Whitmer declared now over 6 years ago that she’d “fix the damn roads” once elected. The 10^th highest spending state in the nation should have enough money to fix up its roads. Whitmer, however, bears little self-reflection when asking her constituents for more of their hard-earned money. 

“To my friends in the GOP: fixing the roads in a sustainable way means looking for new, fair sources of revenue,” said Whitmer in a press release. She continued on to argue, “We can’t just cut our way to better roads. Defunding public safety or public health is not the way to fix potholes,” 

We actually can “cut our way to better roads,” and not only is such a thing possible, it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do.  

As James Hohman, Fiscal Policy Director at the Mackinaw Center put it, “The governor could have improved road quality by spending more of the state’s growing budget on road repair… She spent gains on corporate welfare and pork instead.” 

Let’s imagine a situation where Whitmer gets her way. The legislature finds a new source of revenue, which is politician speak for eking out another few billion in tax revenue, and Whitmer uses this money to fix the roads. What happens when another problem comes up? What happens when public schools want more money, or transportation technology needs to be updated, or any of the other million budget problems come to the spotlight and become a new rallying cry for democrats?  

Well, what happens is they raise taxes.  

If, rather than cry for more revenue, Whitmer and the democrats were to truly analyze the problems with their budget and attempt reform, then maybe that wouldn’t have to happen. In that case, maybe the state could afford a couple unforeseen circumstances. 

Anyone who knows how to handle their money knows this isn’t the way to do it. Democrats claim that the principles of good finance change when passed from the individual to the government. Those who are fiscally responsible know that idea to be false. Representatives aren’t exempt from the rules just because they’re not personally affected by the consequences. 

In the last budget, Whitmer blew $4.6 billion on corporate handouts, $3 billion in public works projects, and untold billions on questionable (at best) programs such as tuition free community college and rent subsidy for illegal immigrants. Cutting just a fraction of these costs could have easily supplied the $3.9 billion needed to solve the state’s road problem. 

Whitmer turning around and asking taxpayers for more after blowing through her massive budget surplus in a single year is simply insulting, and her constituents shouldn’t stand for it.