LANSING, Mich. – Gov. Gretchen Whitmer introduced her 2025 fiscal year state budget Wednesday, Feb. 7.
It’s a whopping $80 billion, but smaller than last year’s, which was propped up by federal relief dollars.
The governor wants to expand spending on education and affordable housing.
The era of truckloads of federal dollars is over. In 2020, before COVID took hold, the state’s budget was $64 billion. It topped out in 2023 at $87 billion and this year’s proposed budget is almost $81 billion.
And there’s a lot they’re fitting in with the governor’s vision of growing Michigan through government-funded programs.
“We’ve put a vision that really is about lowering people’s costs, expanding and growing our economy and ensuring greater outcomes for our kids and our skills attainment,” Whitmer said.
She said she will forgo $675 in teacher pension obligation payments which will help fund $600 million for education and adding housing rehabilitation money. Overall, she wants to spend nearly a billion and a half on rehabbing old housing stock to address the affordable housing shortage.
At the top of her priorities: guaranteeing free, or taxpayer-funded, community college for any high school graduate.
“We’re in a strong fiscal position,” Whitmer said. “We built this budget on utilizing resources based on what we believe are sustainable.”
The governor claims to be cutting taxes but Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt pointed out much of the governor’s wish list is one time funding or without line items at all and that she needed a tax hike to make happen.
“She finds some special classes to try to give some tax credits to but she never wants to provide overall tax relief to small businesses or all working families,” Nesbitt said.
As things stand now, the governor has more than $2 billion in the rainy day fund, but only $19 million as a surplus -- a far cry from last year’s $9 billion surplus.