Granholm Budget Proposal

[Phil Solarz]

I listened to Gov. Jennifer Granholm Friday morning of the Paul W. Smith show spelling out her 2011 budget and all I heard was more of the same crap Obama is pushing; entitlements, entitlements, entitlements. She spoke of increasing tax revenues to secure federal matching funds for such things as more food stamps and unemployment benefits.

We need jobs in this state not more government spending, when will those in Lansing figure this out?
We need tax cuts now, not in 2012 as she has proposed. Cut out the sir-charge on small businesses (it’s at 20% right now) remove these restrictions that keep employers from hiring and our economy will come back.

Ms. Granholm also mentioned saving the education system from a cut of $255 per student so we could work towards a smaller class size, well we’ve been doing this for years and it has not worked. The Japanese have a class size with as many as 55 students in them and their student’s success rate is far above ours.

Study after study suggests that if we remove the bottom 5 to 10% of the bad teachers, students will flourish. The democratic political machine however with its strong support from unions such as the NEA and the AFT would not think of cutting these funds for fear of their campaign piggy bank running low.

As long as I can remember, politicians have been stating that they are going to fix education, lower taxes and create jobs; they’ve done none of these.

One solution to the education system would be implementing the voucher program state wide so that parents can decide where their children get an education. Once these teachers unions start losing funding because of student enrollment in the public plan, they will find a way to pare down on these poor teachers.

[Phil Solarz]

Of course Mark Corriveau won't cut education, he's a democrat and the majority of his campaign funds come from unions, teachers included. I believe Patrick stated at the Rev. Yuille meeting that the Michigan "nut" in the budget was at $33 billion. The last time I heard they were planning on a budget of $47 billion. Everything after the $33 billion should be eliminated and we need to return our legislature to a part time status. We have over 100 of them at close to $90,000.00 a year or $9 million a year in salaries alone, Add to that the cost to maintain the office space, staff and maintenance crews to keep them in operation.

[Sharon Lollio]

They were just talking on FOX this morning about states that are on the verge of bankruptcy. There are nine and of course ours is one of them. One of the biggest problems? The retirement packages for state employees. Considering what is paid in as compared to what they receive upon retirement is ridiculous. I'm sure some retired math teachers could figure out the equation comes out to financial disaster and an unsustainable expenditure. This state is in big trouble but in meeting with Mark Corriveau (State Rep) last week - education was on the top of his list of things that cannot (or will NOT) be subject to cuts.