McMorrow budget figures don’t add up

Sen. Mallory McMorrow overstated Michigan’s population growth and understated the growth of state tax collections in a March 9 MIRS News interview.

“Adjusted for inflation, the state of Michigan is operating with the same revenue we had in 1968 despite gaining more than 3 million people from then until today,” said McMorrow, who will run for a United States Senate seat this fall.

The state’s revenue and population numbers do not align with the senator’s claims, James Hohman, a fiscal policy expert at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told Michigan Capitol Confidential.

Michigan’s population increased from 8.7 million in 1968 to 10.1 million in 2025, an increase of 1.4 million, not 3 million.

McMorrow also said that state revenue has been flat since 1968. The record doesn’t support that claim, Hohman said. State revenue was $2 billion in the 1967-68 fiscal year. If the state government revenue trend were flat, state revenue, adjusted for inflation, would be $18.9 billion. Instead, it was $48.9 billion in 2024-25, an increase of 2330%.

This means the state spent $2,178 per person in 1967-68 but $4,832 in 2024-25, for a 122% increase.

McMorrow did not respond to a request for comment.

"We saw a presentation in state Senate Appropriations that shows that our revenues simply are not keeping up,” McMorrow told MIRS. “However, the tax burden has shifted off of corporations and on to middle-income taxpayers. So I hear residents saying, 'I feel like I'm paying a lot. I'm not getting anything for it,' and we need a fairer tax structure that supports the revenue that we need to ensure we can appropriately fund our schools, our roads, our infrastructure and, especially right now, Medicaid."

Other states have recently increased their tax rates. Washington recently passed a 9.9% income tax, effective in 2028, on incomes over $1 million. Massachusetts enacted a 4% percent surcharge on incomes over $1 million annually.

A similar tax proposal failed to garner enough signatures to reach the 2026 ballot in Michigan.