Whitmer Wednesday: This November, Michiganders Have A Choice, Do They Want More Freedom Or More Government In Their Lives

BIDEN-WHITMER POLICIES SUFFOCATED MICHIGAN’S ECONOMY

• Today, Joe Biden and his transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, are in Detroit attending the North American International Auto Show and Gretchen Whitmer is “ridin’ with Biden.”
• As the November elections approach, Democrats are getting desperate to distract you from the harm the Biden and Whitmer administrations inflicted on Michiganders’ pocketbooks, safety and personal freedoms.
• Inflation is wreaking havoc on Michiganders’ pocketbooks.
  • Nationally, consumer prices have risen by 8.3 percent in the last 12 months after marking the largest annual increase in 40 years.
  • In the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn Metro area in the last 12 months:
    • The overall cost of living is up 8.6 percent, higher than the national average
    • The cost of food increased 13.9 percent
    • The cost of meat, poultry, fish and eggs increased by 9.5 percent
    • The cost of dairy products increased by 22.8 percent
    • The cost of household energy increased by 15.8 percent including a gas service cost spike of 34.8 percent
    • The cost of regular unleaded gasoline increased 20.9 percent

• • The City of Detroit is only predicting wages to rise by 4.1 percent this year which is less than half what is needed to keep up with inflation. 
  • The Senate Fiscal Agency predicted that Michiganders would effectively see a 4.4 percent income cut due to the cost of goods exceeding income growth. 
• • WDIV-Detroit: “Everything seems to cost more…”
  • Fox 2 Detroit’s Tim Skubick: “People are paying attention to the inflation problem, they see it every other day when they go to the gas pump.”
  • Reports all over Michigan are showing that businesses are hurting and families are struggling to make ends meet over inflation.

• There are 90,400 fewer Michiganders working today compared to when Whitmer first took office.
  • This includes 23,400 manufacturing jobs, 14,500 retail jobs and 38,200 leisure and hospitality jobs.
• Michigan has the 8^th highest unemployment rate in the nation.
• Michigan’s economic growth grinded to a halt in the 1^st quarter 2022 as it registered only 0.1 percent GDP growth.
  • Michigan is only one of four states to have had negative GDP growth in both 2019 and 2020.
• Michigan ranked 49^th in the nation in individual income growth in 2021.

WHITMER LIED ABOUT CREATING AUTO JOBS

• In a press release responding to the July jobs report, Whitmer falsely claimed she created 25,000 auto jobs where in fact Michigan has lost auto jobs in Whitmer.
  • The Detroit Free Press’ Clara Hendrickson analyzed this bogus claim on PolitiFact which rated Whitmer’s baseless assertion that she created 25,000 auto jobs as “mostly false.”
  • PolitiFact: “The state has not seen a net gain of 25,000 jobs since Whitmer took office. Data shows Michigan’s auto industry is still recovering from the massive job losses suffered during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
  • The Daily Wire: “Gretchen Whitmer Continues To Brag About Creating 25,000 Auto Jobs – But That’s Not True.”
  • The Washington Free Beacon: “Michigan Governor Won’t Stop Lying to Voters About Job Gains.”

• Michigan lost 5,000 auto jobs in July.

• Since Gretchen Whitmer took office, Michigan lost 1,700 auto jobs.
  • This is a result of a 3,700 job loss in motor vehicle manufacturing and a 1,300 jobs loss in motor vehicle parts manufacturing.

• Ford announced in August that they are cutting 3,000 jobs with a “significant” percentage of them being in Michigan.
• Ford announced in July that they are cutting one-quarter of their salaried workforce, 8,000 jobs, to accommodate the electric vehicle push.

• In April, Stellantis announced that they will be opening up a second electric vehicle battery plant and chose Kokomo, Indiana over two locations in Michigan that also bid for the plant. 
  • The Detroit News: “The investment would mean Michigan has failed to win any battery plants from the transatlantic automaker’s first round of gigafactory investments.” 
  • Both Monroe County and Wayne County put in a bid for the factory. 
  • Stellantis chose Indiana because they provided favorable business incentives. 
  • Whitmer sat on $500 million in cash grants which Republicans in the legislature set aside to “help seal economic development deals.” 
• In March, Stellantis and LG announced a $4.1 billion investment in Ontario building electric vehicle batteries in Windsor, just across the river from Detroit creating 2,500 Canadian jobs.
  • The Detroit News: “Michigan has missed out on another electric-vehicle battery plant – this time, to its neighbor across the Detroit River.
• In 2021, Whitmer failed to place a bid on a Ford Motor Company electric vehicle expansion.
  • Ford decided to open up factories in Tennessee and Kentucky, an $11.4 billion investment which created 11,000 jobs between those states.
  • The Detroit News Editorial: “Michigan not ready to compete for EV future.”

WHITMER CAMPAIGNED TO BE BIDEN’S VICE PRESIDENT

• In March 2020, Whitmer endorsed Joe Biden for President.
  • Initially Whitmer laughed off calls for her to be Vice President – Whitmer said that she was only interested in fixing the roads in Michigan and did not have national ambitions.
  • However, in March 2020, Biden announced that he would be picking a female running mate and Whitmer immediately spoke to Biden about being his Vice President.
  • The next month, Whitmer said that “a lot of nice stuff happened” to her about her rising profile during the COVID-19 pandemic when she was being discussed as vice president.
  • Whitmer hired Pete Buttigieg’s national press secretary as a communications advisor and Whitmer stepped up the frequency of national cable TV interviews.
  • In August, Whitmer flew to Wilmington, DE to interview for the job.
  • In December, Whitmer admitted that she would have accepted the nomination if it were offered to her.
• Whitmer spoke at the 2020 DNC virtual convention where she called Joe Biden “tested” and “proven.”
• Whitmer campaigned for Biden and Harris at numerous campaign events in Michigan.

AFTER BIDEN BECAME PRESIDENT, WHITMER FOLLOWED HIS LEAD AND SUPPORTED HIS DISASTEROUS POLICIES

• Biden and Whitmer prolonged getting Michiganders back to work.
  • Biden pushed for unemployment checks that prolonged unemployment by incentivizing workers not to return to work.
  • The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) improperly paid $8.5 billion in fraudulent or ineligible claims after the UIA invented four edibility criteria categories not authorized by the CARES act.
  • UIA knowingly paid out thousands of fraudulent claims after gutting the fraud investigation unit and stripping away even the basic fraud protection protocols.
• Whitmer backed President Biden’s unconstitutional employer vaccine mandate. 
  • Whitmer initially opposed the mandate, telling business leaders in rural Montcalm County that the mandates are “a problem for all of us.” 
  • However, after pressure to conform, Whitmer got in line with the Biden talking points and backed the employer mandates saying “I appreciate what President Biden is trying to accomplish … It’s about saving lives. It’s about getting more people vaccinated.” 
• Biden cancelled the Keystone pipeline which blocked thousands of good-paying American jobs, many of which were in construction.
  • Whitmer blocked the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline which will cause $5.4 billion of economic damages in southeast Michigan and Ohio and lead to the loss of thousands of skilled trade and union jobs.
  • This sparked an international incident in which Canada invoked a 1977 treaty that guaranteed the flow of natural gas from Canada to the United States.

MICHIGAN WILL NOT FORGET WHAT WHITMER AND THE DEMOCRATS DID TO ORDINARY MICHIGANDERS

• Whitmer defied the will of the people, the legislature, the courts and the law when she shut down the state in one of the most pathetic power trips in recent American history.
  • Whitmer’s unconstitutional lockdown led to 37 percent of small businesses shutting their doors exceeding the national average of businesses who were forced to close during the pandemic.

• • According to an April 2021 study sponsored by Facebook, 36 percent of small businesses in Michigan laid of staff during the pandemic with 56 percent of those small businesses reported that they Laid off half or more of their staff.

• The Whitmer administration tried to cover up that they had over 8,000 long-term care center deaths after Whitmer fought with the legislature and health officials not to separate COVID-19 positive nursing home patients from the healthy patients.
• Whitmer repeatedly failed to attract new business into Michigan as electric vehicle and battery makers as well as semiconductor manufacturers chose other Midwest states to do business in.
  • Whitmer failed to revive Michigan’s auto sector and resorted to lying about it.
• Whitmer did not begin to fix the roads as promised until her 4^th year in office.
• In her third month in office, Whitmer called for a 45-cent gas tax, effectively doubling it.
  • This comes after her 2018 campaign in which she told Michiganders that the notion that she would raise the gas tax was “ridiculous” and “nonsense.”
• Whitmer ignored the lead water crisis in Benton Harbor for three years.
  • NBC News: “Michigan officials have known about the elevated lead levels in Benton Harbor for three years…”
  • Benton Harbor Community Water Council Leader Rev. Edward Pinkney on Whitmer and Benton Harbor’s lead pipes: “she should have did this three years ago.”
• The Whitmer administration used the levers of power to persecute their political opponents while blocking legitimate investigations into their corruption.

• Whitmer supported the “spirit” of defund the police movement and Garlin Gilchrist criticized cash bail.
  • Whitmer’s task force on jail and pretrial incarceration, which was co-chaired by Garlin Gilchrist, recommended that criminals are to be “presumptively” imposed sentences other than jail.
  • The Michigan State Police publicly released their annual crime report and the details in their report are truly shocking:
    • Violent crime in Michigan is up 12.7 percent from 2019.
    • Carjackings are up from 764 percent from 2019.
    • Assaults in police officers rose 31.7 percent from 2019.
    • Murders are up 30 percent from 2019.
    • Aggravated assaults are up 24.3 percent from 2019.
    • Motor vehicle thefts are up 20.9 percent from 2019.
  • State Farm insurance reported that they have seen a 492 percent increase in stolen catalytic converters.
    • Grand Blanc Township Police Chief Ron Wiles: “It’s not just us, but other municipalities have caught people in the act. It’s not just one person or two people, there are teams going around not just Genesee County, but Shiawassee, Ogema, Livingston County, all in search of catalytic converters.”

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