State Rep. Jay DeBoyer today said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposals and priorities align more with a national political agenda than the needs of Michigan families following her State of the State address on Wednesday night.

Whitmer laid out plans for two years of free community college for all high school graduates, $1.4 billion in housing earmarks, additional green energy incentives for electric vehicles and other costly, big government ventures. These plans come on the heels of a state budget for the current fiscal year that spent over $80 billion.

“The 80s music references and antics in her speech were great, but this sounded like a broken record,” said DeBoyer, of Clay Township. “Record spending, more money handed out, but it’s ultimately on someone else’s dime. The governor continues to ignore who’s actually paying for all this stuff and pretending this is all an endless well of money for government to pump. That’s the real issue that we aren’t getting to, and it has a tremendous impact on our ability to be attractive for people who currently call our state home and others who are potentially looking to locate here. States with lower taxes and less government interference are growing, and the speech I heard is a plan to take us farther away from that.”

While Whitmer touted record funding for education, DeBoyer said very little of that money has gone to protecting students through school safety initiatives such as dedicated funding for school resource officers or updated emergency planning. The governor’s recently created population commission also reported that seven out of 10 Michigan students can’t read or do math proficiently, and Michigan is still ranked among the bottom 10 states in the country in fourth grade reading proficiency, high school graduation rate, and average SAT score despite the state spending more money than ever before on K-12 schools.

“We have loosened standards, and performance in the classroom will suffer. That hurts our kids, families and future generations,” DeBoyer said. “The governor puts unions above families. She puts teachers above students. Money gets appropriated to groups and initiatives she is aligned with. These are political strategies, not practical solutions that will solve problems and improve education.”

DeBoyer also criticized the governor’s housing proposal as one that misses the mark.

“Her plan is to just throw money at the problem without actually working through the problem. Studies in states like California have shown that prevailing wage keeps housing prices higher, but the governor isn’t interested in touching that. She just wants to commit to more government spending, which unfortunately falls onto hardworking taxpayers and small business owners.”