Overview
- Whitmer prioritized early reading with a proposed $625 million literacy package, free full-day pre-K for about 68,000 children, and a shift to proven instruction with expanded tutoring, citing Michigan’s 44th-place fourth-grade reading rank.
- To increase housing supply, she proposed a new state affordable housing tax credit, streamlining local zoning, and eliminating what she called nonsensical construction requirements.
- Her medical debt plan would cap interest rates, keep medical debt off credit reports, require hospital financial-assistance programs, and ban home liens and foreclosures tied to unpaid medical bills.
- The governor’s roughly $88 billion executive budget maintains large education and Medicaid investments, adds revenue from higher taxes on tobacco, vaping products and online gambling, and offers about $90 million in tax relief for senior homeowners.
- Republican leaders, including House Speaker Matt Hall and Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, rejected tax increases and signaled they will push spending cuts as Whitmer urges an on-time budget and asks Congress to restore expired ACA premium subsidies to stabilize coverage for 2.5 million Medicaid enrollees.