Michigan Legislature Still Reneging On Lowering Our State Income Tax Rate

Back in 2007 Governor Granholm and her compadres in the legislature raised our state taxes “temporarily” from 3.9% to 4.35% to avoid a Michigan government shutdown.  Yes, you read that correctly I wrote temporarily.

Granholm and the Democrats who controlled the House and the Republicans who controlled the Senate decided they needed to increase our state tax by 11.5% instead of cutting their budgets.  They did so promising us they would roll back that increase to 3.9 percent starting in 2011.

They not only did not tell the residents of Michigan the truth about rolling back the state income tax they did one better.   They did not even follow the law they built into the bill.  As the Mackinac Center for Public Policy wrote back in 2018:

“tax-hiking politicians frequently claim the increased burdens they impose are “temporary,” but the law authorizing this one actually had the roll-back written right into its provisions. It promised, “Beginning on October 1, 2011 and each October 1 after 2011, the maximum rate under this subsection shall be reduced by 0.1 each year,” reverting to 3.9% “on and after October 1, 2015.”

Governor Snyder led this attack against the law and in 2012, the Republican House, Senate and Governor agreed to let the rate fall to 4.25% on October 1, 2012.  They then decided that was enough of following the law and Snyder and his merry band of truth slayers and lawbreakers canceled the rest of the rollbacks.

Is it time to hold the legislature to the past promise?  I ask this question because we are now seeing records amount of tax flowing into our treasury.  There is so much tax revenue coming into the state's treasury the House and Senate Republicans increased our current budget by a record 7.2%.  I cannot find a larger increase in the Michigan budget ever, this appears to be a state record.  With that in mind, yes I did say "Republicans" increased this budget a record amount.  Sure Whitmer signed it but Democrats will sign any budget that spends more of other people's money.

Here are the numbers:

Our last state budget (2020/2021) totaled $62.8 billion dollars.  Our current state budget (2021/2022) that started on October 1st totaled $70 billion dollars.  That is an 11.5% increase. To be fair $2.7 billion of those dollars did come from the Democrats in congress via the world's largest slush fund.

That slush fund was passed with only Democrat votes in March of this year and totaled $1.9 TRILLION dollars.  We were told these funds were to be used exclusively for Covid related issues only.  The reason the Republicans voted against it is due to the fact that they were already sitting on a trillion dollars of unspent Covid money from the last bill, and this bill had almost nothing to do with Covid money and mostly to do with paying back their supporters.

For instance, Biden promised everyone that none of that money could be used to top off ailing private union pensions funds.  Add another entry to the ever-growing book of Biden's and the Democrat's lies.  He gave $86 Billion dollars to top off private union funds.  Yes, he used our dollars, us who have no pension to give to PRIVATE union pension funds.

So let us following the numbers:

$70 billion - 62.8 billion - 2.7 billion = a $4.5 billion increase.

That equals a 7.2% increase over last year's budget.  A record in the history of Michigan.

The Republicans are so proud of this budget not one of them, and I tried hard, but not one of them will come on my show to discuss it.  Please share this article to spread the word for what they have done and their lack of accountability to discuss it with me and their constituents.

It is time they uphold the written-in-law promise to roll back our state income tax to 3.9%.  Demand it or inform them you will not vote for them.

The Mackinac Center reported yesterday:

‘If the legislature and governor cut the state income tax increase back to 3.9 percent as promised, taxpayers would save around $1 billion for a full fiscal year according to a Senate Fiscal Agency report. State revenue would also decrease by $1 billion but revenue is currently up by $3.6 billion, a 10.4 percent increase.”

Tax revenue is up 10.4%!

That means this is the perfect time to cut our tax rate and give the money back to the people who pay it and can spend it much more wisely than these politicians can.  If we rolled back to 3.9% they would still have an extra $2.6 billion to waste on something.