MI Governor hits a new low: Granholm playing political games with Human Services
By RightMichigan.com Posted in Breaking News | Budget | Ethics | Granholm | Michigan | tax hike | taxes | www.RightMichigan.com — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
Some interesting details began to emerge over the weekend regarding the sudden three-hundred-plus million dollar budget surplus the State miraculously discovered after closing the books on 2007. When all was said and done there was about $350 million sitting in the bank that the good folks in Lansing hadn't expected to be there and before they got a chance to figure out the where and the how and the what-now a creeping, insidious spin started to permeate the press almost instantly.
While people like House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche suggested immediately that something was amiss the administration began talking to the press and "reminding" them that with projected deficits facing the State in 2008 this money was almost like a Christmas miracle. They shouldn't question it, they should just note that this will help balance the books in the coming year. It's a subtle move. Just don't address the "where" and the "how" and talk about the money in "conservative" terms. Talk about how it will help avoid future tax increases. Because no one likes tax hikes in an election year.
All of a sudden no one remembers to ask where it came from or what the appropriate response really is (did I hear someone say "refund"). Heck, some folks in the press even lose their minds and start printing flat out lies. Take the big headline story from the Associated Press over the weekend:
Some House Republicans say the surplus shows the government wasn't as desperate for new revenue as it claimed during last year's budget negotiations.
"Normally finishing financially in the black is a job well done, but I can't look at it that way when the wallets of hardworking families of Michigan were just squeezed because the state said it needed more money or else," GOP Rep. Kevin Elsenheimer of Kewadin said in a release last week.
Faced with a $1.75 billion shortfall, lawmakers and Granholm increased revenue by $1.3 billion by raising the state income tax on Oct. 1 and placing a surcharge on the new Michigan Business Tax that took effect Jan. 1. They also trimmed or restricted spending by more than $400 million.
Representative Elsenheimer brings up a good point. And the article is presenting the "conservative" angle, so what's the problem? Where's the inaccuracy or the bias? Go back to that first paragraph. Not only was it a $1.4 billion tax hike complete with a $900 million compliance cost (making it a $2.3 billion tax hike on businesses) that's not the sentence that'll drive you crazy. "They also trimmed or restricted spending by more than $400 million."
Patently false. Unequivocally untrue. The FY2007-2008 budget was the biggest budget in the history of the State of Michigan. Spending increased over FY2006-2007. There was no trimming. There was only restricting if you go with the strictest definition of the word and assume that the fact they didn't spend a hundred billion dollars buying every Michigan child a pony represents some sort of fiscal restraint.
But the article has done it's job. It's muddied the waters. It's protecting the entrenched Democrat big government interests in Lansing (as the MSM is want to do) and put on a nice coat of camouflage by talking to Republicans to make the piece look bipartisan. And still the question remains... where exactly did this extra cash come from?
For the answers we'll go to this morning's lead editorial in the Detroit News:
It should be remembered that these departments, along with the State Police, were embarrassed when it was revealed that they had overspent their appropriations for the 2006 fiscal year by about $50 million and state lawmakers were not informed until after the gubernatorial election.
Half the surplus in the General Fund is the result of unexpectedly strong revenues in the last couple of months of the budget year. The other half is the result of what are known as "lapses," or unspent appropriations that are returned to the treasury. Three-quarters of this amount came from the Departments of Health and Human Services as the result of reductions in their spending in the last quarter of the budget year, according to an analysis by the state Senate Fiscal Agency published late last month.
The Granholm administration at the time vowed to put reforms in place to make sure overspending of departmental budgets did not occur during the course of a fiscal year.
It should ALSO be remembered that these departments failed to report their overspending in 2006 until after the election in violation of State law which required the department heads to send notice as soon as they knew they'd be in the red, a threshold that most surmise was reached anywhere between August and October of that particular election year.
They hid their spending malfeasance specifically and intentionally to aid the Governor politically. And now they've managed to trim their own spending by hundreds of millions of dollars but don't tell anyone until after the Governor works her tax-hike magic and foists the biggest tax increase in the history of the State on struggling Michigan families. So the pattern goes something like this...
She also wants the biggest tax-hike in the history of the State of Michigan but needs to scare the voters and a dozen key Democrats in the legislature by engineering a fiscal "crisis."
She also gets record $2.3 billion tax hike.
This isn't even politics as usual. We're talking Clintonian two-faced politics at their finest. The governor finds a way to protect her legacy, the press plays her games and the taxpayers are left footing the bill. Convenient.