How gov’t is supposed to work
Where’s former Gov. Milliken when you need him?
The current governor and GOP legislature need a good dose of what the former moderate and well-respected governor often said. He complained that the top priority in his day was getting re-elected. (Sound familiar?)
His spot on advice was to the point: “If you do the public’s business first, you will get re-elected. It’s not about the politicians. It’s all about the citizens first.”
What citizens have witnessed for the last three-plus years is a Democratic governor who knows first hand what her predecessor was expounding. The Milliken-way of doing things was often discussed at the Whitmer dinner table as her father was part of the administration and her mom, who worked for then Attorney General Frank Kelley, knew that the governor was right.
Yet despite good intentions, she and the legislative R’s have had an on-again-off-again adversarial relationship that has been mostly off.
Sure, they rose to the occasion recently with a strong, no messing around approach to luring GM to pump a ton of money into EV car facilities in Michigan and they deserved all the credit in the world for not trying to score political points first and the public’s business last.
They’ve also managed to plod through a number of state budgets on a bi-partisanship basis, but more often than not the talks began on a decidedly partisan basis with fingers pointed at each other for weeks before everyone got down to brass tacks.
And now.
Oh my. Gov. Milliken would not be smiling.
The Republicans — without negotiating with the governor — popped a tax cut plan designed in this election year, to curry favor with you by stuffing X amount of dollars in your bank account.
The governor, without negotiating with the Republicans, popped a nifty $500 dollar tax rebate check notion in this election year to curry favor with you, too. Don’t you feel special?
It was classic, “getting re-elected and scoring points on the other side comes first.”
She rejected the GOP plan.
They rejected hers and neither of them did it in a statesman or woman-like way.
“She is pandering,” the senate GOP leader Mike Shirkey emotionally told the senate chamber as he continues his tough to disguise disgust for “my governor.”
Even though the R’s revised tax cut did include some of the very elements she wanted in the first place, she conveniently ignored that positive movement and just turned thumbs down on the whole shebang.
It did not have to be so.
Instead of playing to the grandstands, one might ask why didn’t they sit down before all this bluster to see if they could find some common ground before they came out blasting each other?
Of course, they had that option but ignored it to go wallow in the political mud to gratify that driving ambition to win some votes.
The sorry part of all this is that supposedly now that everyone has gotten their pound of political flesh, they will have to sit down and actually do the people’s business with an eye on you and not each other.
And in the end, they will find a compromise that she can sign and the R’s can embrace.
Neither side will get all they want, but there is nothing wrong with each side giving a little to get a little.
It’s actually the way government is supposed to be, some would argue.