Dear Friend,

This week, I was excited to be on Mackinac Island for this year’s Mackinac Policy Conference. Yesterday, I delivered the keynote address highlighting our ability here in Michigan to “do hard things.” Some people call it GRIT. It’s our willingness to work together in the short term to get things done that make a big difference in the long term.

In my keynote, I talked about the hard things we’ve already done and laid out three more that we must do: literacy, roads, and chips.

Recently, we secured a fighter mission at Selfridge, protecting 30,000 jobs, and raised the minimum wage while giving Michigan some of the best paid sick leave policies in the country. Over the long haul, we have pushed the boundaries to make critical investments in our kids, from free breakfast and lunch for all 1.4 million public school students to lowering the cost of higher education. We rolled back the retirement tax on our seniors and quintupled the Working Families Tax Credit. We protected reproductive rights, expanded LGBTQ+ rights, and passed commonsense gun violence prevention laws. 

Let’s build on our progress, keep working together, and continue doing hard things to make a difference for Michiganders.

I want to share with you the next hard things that we must get done to move Michigan forward.

Sincerely,

Gretchen Whitmer

Governor

The Next Hard Things We Must Get Done for Michigan

Over the last six-and-a-half years, Michigan has been a model for doing hard things. We have worked across the aisle, between government at all levels, and across industries of all kinds to make meaningful, lasting progress.

During that time, I’ve learned that leadership is about fighting hard, often quietly, for your big goals. It is your tolerance for taking a few punches to win the fight. Leadership is your ability to do hard things. Here are the next hard things we must get done for Michigan.

Next, we must tackle Michigan’s literacy crisis, finalize a long-term solution for state and local roads, and start building a semiconductor manufacturing facility, also known as a “fab.”

Literacy

We must make sure that every kid in Michigan can read.  

I believe that every child deserves access to a high-quality public education from PreK through postsecondary. When I took office, we had been underinvesting in education for decades. In 2021, we finally closed the funding gap between our public schools. Since then, we’ve raised teacher pay and cut retiree taxes, expanded on-campus mental health resources, and started feeding free breakfast and lunch to all 1.4 million public school students. Our graduation rate, Advanced Placement (AP) class numbers, and career and technical education completion rates are at all-time highs.

But let’s be frank, we face a literacy crisis, not just in Michigan, but across the country. Just a quarter of our 4th graders can read proficiently. That’s unacceptable. Literacy is statistically correlated to academic and financial success. We must make sure that every kid in Michigan can read. We must angle every education policy over the next 19 months to meet this high-level goal.

Late last year, I signed commonsense legislation to use proven, science of reading strategies—like phonics. These new laws also require schools to test for dyslexia so they can identify students who need extra help early. As the State Board of Education hires their new superintendent, let’s urge them to pick a candidate who will make literacy a top priority.

Knowing how to read is an ordinary superpower that we all deserve to have. Let’s do what it takes to get our kids back on track for the bright futures they all deserve.

Roads

We need to deliver a sustainable, long-term solution for local and state roads so folks can go to work, drop their kids off at school, and run errands without blowing a tire or cracking an axle.

I’m proud of my Rebuilding Michigan Plan, which has fixed our most economically-critical highways and bridges. But as I said in my State of the State, Rebuilding Michigan was a temporary fix for a long-term challenge. We need to fix our local roads, which have been underinvested in for decades.

I’m grateful for the engagement on this issue all year long by members of the Michigan legislature in both parties. We’re inching closer to a deal, and we’ll have to compromise to do this right. That means new revenue and responsible cuts, too.

Let’s get it done while balancing our budget, without burdening the middle class. This year, we will. Because we can do hard things.

Chips

To lead the future of advanced manufacturing, we must build more semiconductor chip fabrication facilities, also known as fabs.

In just the last few years, we’ve secured projects across the state in several key industries, but I want to focus on semiconductor chips. We’ve seen the devastating consequence of what a global shortage of chips can do. It forced carmakers to buy up parking lots and fill them with almost-done cars awaiting chips, and it jacked up prices on phones, computers, and appliances. In the decades ahead, being able to make chips top-to-bottom in America will allow us to stay on the cutting edge of AI. Whoever dominates this technology, from design to production, will win the 21st century. We cannot afford to lose this race to China. We must win.

To do so, we have to build more semiconductor chip fabrication facilities, also known as fabs. Fabs are the most advanced factories on the planet and take an enormous amount of time and resources to build. A single fab uses more steel than the Mackinac Bridge. A dozen times more cement than Ford Field. And more miles of cable than the Michigan coastline. All this work takes between five and twelve thousand union construction workers around two years to complete. Once up and running, a fab supports between 3,000 to 6,000 good-paying, local jobs.

A fab is the kind of transformational project where a dad can work on pouring the foundation, his daughter can help wire it up to the grid, and his grandchildren can work inside, making the chips our world needs. It’s an intergenerational investment that makes an entire region an economic magnet, inspiring families to move here and put down roots.

Together, let’s land and start building a fab in Michigan by the end of next year. 

We Can Do Hard Things

A fundamental challenge I want to solve is to change the way that people think about Michigan—both Michiganders and outsiders alike. We are a proud people. We love our state, but we have not always been so sunny about its direction. 

For a long time, especially in the wake of the 2008/2009 financial crisis, Michiganders were pessimistic about our future. Compounding events like the Detroit Bankruptcy and the Flint Water Crisis made it worse. The fundamentals were broken and people lost trust in their government. In 2018, I ran for governor to tackle both those big challenges. I wanted to fix the fundamentals and restore trust, to give people confidence that Michigan is headed in the right direction. Today, a majority of Michiganders feel positive about our state’s future. We can do hard things.

As a state, we’ve done a lot over the last couple of years, but we’re not done yet. Let’s remember that we’re all on the same team—Team Michigan. Together, let’s continue doing hard things.