Last week, the House passed 16 departmental budgets for the 2022 fiscal year and a series of supplemental budget bills to allocate billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funding. Unfortunately, this irresponsible budget proposal reads more like a partisan agenda than actually providing the support and relief that Michiganders need now. It includes 75% funding cuts for many state departments, focuses on unnecessarily paying off bonds early instead of investing in transformational projects, and ties many vital programs to removing gubernatorial authority. House Democrats proposed nearly 50 amendments to right the many wrongs in this proposal, almost all of which were rejected. The budget bills went on to pass largely along party lines. In the wake of the worst crisis we’ve seen in our lifetimes, now is the time to invest in our people, our economy and our infrastructure, but the budgets that passed last week fail to deliver.
