Whitmer
held a press conference on Thursday to give an update to her efforts
to fight Covid, and to whine that D.C. should send her a lot of cash,
quickly.
Via WILX:
During
her press conference, the governor listed the amount of money the
state has spent in fighting COVID-19. She said the state has more
than $436 million fighting COVID-19 in the past 10 weeks, which is
money the state wasn’t planning on spending when the budget was set
a year ago, on top of the $3 billion the state has already lost in
tax revenue.
The governor said there is no way to cut spending enough to fill the estimated $6 billion hole over the next two years. She called on the federal government to come together to help Michigan and other states facing budget challenges. Under the current federal cares act, states can’t use federal aid money to pay for things that were in the budget before the pandemic started.
The governor called on the federal government to come together to help Michigan and other states facing budget challenges as a result of the virus.
“Our enemy now is not one another, our enemy is a virus called COVID-19,” the governor said. “We can’t do it on our own,” Gov. Whitmer said.
As expected, she also threatened cuts to education if the federal government didn’t agree to send the state bailout money.
Clearly there must be no other fat to trim in the state budgets if the first thing Democrat governors like Whitmer, Newsom, etc want to cut is education and first responders.
This request for bailout money comes after it was revealed that Whitmer has given the go ahead for taxpayer dollars to be given to Democrat groups as part of the state’s new contact tracing initiative.
Via the Daily Wire:
“Whitmer’s office gave the ‘green light’ for a COVID-19 contact tracing ‘arrangement’ she denied knowledge of and canceled amid outcry over a contractor with Democratic ties,” Bridge Magazine, a local Michigan publication, reported. “Emails obtained through a public records request appear to show Michigan officials tried to avoid controversy by shifting work to apolitical subsidiaries of firms with known partisan leanings.”
Andrea Taverna, a senior adviser in the Michigan Department of the Health and Human Services, said in an email to other Michigan government officials: “We got the green light from EOG [the executive office of the governor] to move forward with a slightly different organizational arrangement of the contact tracing volunteer work. This would still be working with Mike Kolehouse, so work there isn’t lost – it’s just organized somewhat differently – see below.”
In late April, The Washington Free Beacon reported that Whitmer had given control of the state’s contact tracing program to “one of the left’s biggest technology firms” and that the move was seen as potential way of her “using the coronavirus to strengthen the Democratic Party’s data operation.”
The Washington Post reported that the group that hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were going to go “would be managed in coordination with EveryAction, a firm that is closely linked to NGP VAN, a technology provider that boasts that it powers ‘nearly every major Democratic campaign in America.’”
Of course Whitmer made certain that Democrat activists were awarded these contracts.
So tons of money for left wing groups for “contact tracing” but cuts in education if no federal dollars received.
President Trump should threaten to veto any additional taxpayer dollars for the states until they can show they’ve cut all of the fat out of their budgets as possible.
Start with union reps who get paid for doing union business on the state’s payroll. Next get rid of all the waste and stupid commissions and boards.
Make pensions and benefits for state workers the same as for private sector employees. Maybe even put all state workers into Obamacare.
Some states may have to go bankrupt given the unsustainable pension and benefit promises made to past and existing workers.
That should be enough to get started.
