Taking their cues from the New Orleans experience, certain portions of Michigan's government seem to think that we can cut or starve our way to health. (Ask a mental health professional for a name for this sort of thing.) Language denouncing "tax hikes" and fiscal recklessness abounds when these folks talk about our Governor. Fortunately, though, at least some people seem to have figured out that the facts don't support slashing our way to solvency. In the words of the Michigan Municipal League's Executive Director:

Despite the supposed tax "relief" of the last decade it is hard to find anyone who is not employed by the Mackinac Center that actually feels better off.

For those unfamiliar, the Mackinac Center is Michigan's leading advocacy group for auctioning off the social contract to the highest bidder. For some reason, people seem to listen to them when they talk about the State budget spiraling wildly out of control, and about tax cuts being needed to draw families and investment into the State, and denouncing any increase in fees or taxes as a "hike". Now, whenever I hear people launch into overblown rhetoric about how "when a family's budget is tight, it cuts spending, and so should the government," without any numerical backing, I get skeptical - sure, you can eat out less often, but there comes a point when you have to pony up and go out and find a second job. You don't just start calling your children "expenses" and auctioning them off to cut costs.

The other day, I discovered the Michigan Fiscal Responsibility Project, and their lovely little brochure of tax facts (pdf). Hooray for numbers. I particularly like:

• Michigan's general fund budget is 39% lower now than it was in 2000, under Governor Engler. So much for bashing Granholm as a big spender. (See, as parallel, Bushies criticizing Clinton as fiscally wasteful.)

• Michigan's budget is 47% lower than it was in 1978 - but our population is about 10% higher.
• In 1978, the Headlee Amendment capped State spending at 9.49% of State residents' total personal income. We were at that cap in 2000 - currently we're $5.2 billion below it, and that despite steady economic slippage over that six years.

So Michigan has a general fund half what it was 30 years ago, and $5.2 billion lower than a mere 6 years ago as a share of personal income. So, returning to the statement at the beginning, do the residents of Michigan really feel they're better off now, economically, than they were 6 years ago? I'd say "no". Obviously, cutting taxes hasn't worked - at least, not when it's undertaken as an ideology rather than a strategy. What the State's bathtub-drowner ideologues are trying to cast as a "tax hike" sounds to me more like "admitting that our past strategy hasn't worked, and changing tactics." (Insert idioms here about insanity and trying the same thing and expecting different results.)

Now, certainly, I don't think spending willy-nilly is the answer to all of our State's problems. But there's definitely a category of "spending" that's more accurately referred to as
investment", and things like "education", "public health", "public safety", and "economic development" are all obviously within that category. Cutting government spending too far is like hypothermia - it may be a blood-efficient way of keeping your heart pumping a little longer, but it leads to death over time, and, even if you survive, you're going to be awfully unhappy when they're amputating your legs from frostbite.

Dear State Senate: Cutting off your legs does not make your body more efficient. Get off your shivering butt and build a damned fire already.