On Nov. 18, Gov. Jennifer Granholm visited campus to hold a press conference to encourage students to pressure Senate Republicans to reinstate the Michigan Promise Scholarship. Furthermore, MSU College Democrats President Mitchell Rivard called for “all hands on deck,” asking students to heed Granholm’s advice and demand the Promise to be reinstated.
I ask one simple question: Where was the administration of Granholm and Lt. Gov. John Cherry and the rest of Michigan Democrats six years ago?
We did not lose the Promise in 2009; we lost it six years ago. Six years of failure by the Granholm-Cherry administration to demonstrate leadership on spending has resulted in numerous major tax increases, the discontinuation of the Michigan Promise Scholarship and reduced higher-education funding.
The Granholm-Cherry administration abandoned the interests of the students with their burdensome tax increases, resulting in Michigan having one of the weakest economies in the U.S., along with the highest unemployment rate. Businesses and people have left Michigan in droves.
By making the economic climate in Michigan tough for businesses to succeed, Granholm and Cherry successfully destroyed our tax base. People and businesses left Michigan, which led to years of shortfalls in revenues, giving legislators no option but to make tough decisions to balance the state budget.
If Granholm and Cherry had not driven businesses and people out of Michigan with their constant tax increases, Michigan still would have a tax base that would be able to fund programs such as the Promise. Instead, we now have an unemployment rate of 15 percent and rising, and now the College Democrats are calling for the Earned Income Tax Credit to be slowed down in its implementation. This is the same tax credit that targets Michigan’s poor working families and is expected to put between $12.3 and $49 million into the wallets of their pockets.
These families already are having the hardest time making ends meet, and the College Democrats are proposing that we burden them even more by cutting a tax credit they desperately need.
Michigan is facing a challenging time, but we have overcome challenges before, and we will continue to overcome the challenges we face now. We simply ask that our leaders and students keep in mind the burdensome tax increases that have failed to bring in the revenues the Granholm-Cherry administration promised the people of Michigan that they would produce.
These promises, which remain to be unfulfilled, and the failure of the polices of the Granholm-Cherry administration for the past six years, have led to the cutting of the Promise. All of this could have easily been avoided.
Ashley Towner,
criminal justice and political science senior and vice chair of the MSU College Republicans
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