State Should Return Surplus Revenue to Taxpayers Instead
LANSING, MI – The Michigan Freedom Fund Executive Director Tori Sachs today encouraged members of the House of Representatives to oppose corporate welfare bills that would force taxpayers to send $300 million per year to up to 40 of the state’s best-connected for-profit big businesses. Instead, the state government should give money back to Michigan’s hardworking taxpayers. The state government recently reported $20 billion in excess revenue.
“Gretchen Whitmer wants Republicans to give $300 million a year in taxpayer cash to some of the state’s biggest businesses while our roads crumble, schools lock their kids out of class, and inflation soars,” said Sachs. “We know that corporate welfare doesn’t work. The state government has a $20 billion surplus – so let’s give it back to Michigan’s hardworking taxpayers instead.”
House Bills 5425 and 5426 are currently before the House Commerce and Tourism Committee.
5 of 6 research studies conducted on similar corporate welfare giveaway schemes find that the programs were either a wash or hurt job creation in their home states. The Mackinac Center’s “Economic Development? State Handouts and Jobs,” reports that one previous iteration of the corporate handout cost taxpayers $125,000 for every job created.
Michigan’s giveaway to Hollywood movie studios lost almost 90 cents on the dollar. “An Evaluation of the Michigan Business Development Program” in 2018 showed that for every $500,000 in subsidies paid out to corporations, there was a corresponding loss of 600 jobs in the county where the target project was located.
A TEConomy Partners, LLC report, commissioned by the state’s economic development corporation, even found that among roughly 1,400 companies paid with tax incentives to create jobs, some 400 of them weren’t even located in Michigan only a few years later, if they even existed at all.
The Michigan Freedom Fund works to advance conservative ideas, hold our government accountable to taxpayers, and protect Freedom, opportunity, and workers’ Constitutional rights. For more information, please visit MichiganFreedomFund.com.
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