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Michigan voters gave Gov. Gretchen Whitmer a Republican-controlled Legislature in her first term (2019-22), a Democratic-controlled Legislature (2023-24) in her second, and now a divided Legislature for her final two years in office. What will the next two years bring?
Whitmer’s first year in office was marked by several bipartisan policy wins. Michigan reformed the country’s worst auto insurance law. Policymakers upheld property rights by limiting when police can seize a person’s property or money. Republican lawmakers beat back Whitmer’s proposal to increase the gas tax by 45 cents a gallon.
And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Whitmer issued a raft of emergency orders in 2020 and 2021, and the Mackinac Center joined in the constitutional struggle over the separation of powers. But even amid questions about orders that placed sick adults in nursing homes, Whitmer ran circles around Republican legislative leaders, first asserting unilateral command of pandemic management, then enacting new business subsidy programs by capitalizing on fears that our state would lose out on manufacturing jobs.
Despite widespread dissatisfaction over Whitmer’s lockdowns (and her repeated violations of her own rules), voters sent Whitmer back to the governor’s mansion in 2022 and handed her the first Democratic trifecta in decades. Over the next two years, people committed to free market policy watched a systematic dismantling of fiscal reforms, right-to-work, education choice and energy policy.
Michigan needs an inspiring vision for the years ahead. To attract the jobs and employers necessary for prosperity, the state needs abundant and affordable energy. It needs a competitive school system that meets the needs of families. These families will need homes and apartments, so the state should focus on increasing the supply of housing rather than subsidizing the problem. The tax and regulatory environment should promote hard work and innovation, not stifle them. Our economic development strategies shouldn’t merely reward politically connected or favored companies.
With party control split between the state House and Senate, lawmakers have an opportunity to focus on a handful of priorities. They can start by reforming the new paid sick leave and minimum wage laws that threaten to destroy jobs. The Legislature needs to adopt a sustainable budget that still allows spending increases but limits them to the rates of inflation and population growth. At the federal level, the new Department of Government Efficiency is finding waste and inefficiencies; perhaps Michigan needs the same creative thinking about budget priorities. Another bipartisan deal on road funding looks promising, especially given that Whitmer and House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, both seek a solution that doesn’t rely entirely on new taxes.
At the Mackinac Center, we like to say, “Government doesn’t create prosperity. People do.” We will keep fighting for policies that leave people free to make their own choices about how to live, work and raise their families.
