There’s a cost to universal free school meals. But there’s a greater cost — to children and to the state — when students go through the school day hungry. A universal meal program raises student achievement and improves discipline.
Direct care workers help people with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges with everything from counseling to bathing, but low pay and benefits drive workers away. Medicaid isn’t enough, the state must step up as well.
No Michigan family should have to go broke or bankrupt to pay for prescriptions, which have gone up dramatically. Michigan can follow other states, which have independent panels setting limits on what drugmakers charge.
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved state incentives by a slender 10-9 vote, with three Democrats joining six Republicans in opposing the EV battery factory deal championed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Perchloroethylene cleans suits and silks like no other, but it also contaminates soil and groundwater. Some lawmakers want to ban the chemical, but dry cleaners fear another hit to their struggling industry.
In overturning the 1973 Roe decision last year, the nation’s highest court pushed abortion questions back to state politics, but now it likely will decide the fate of the abortion pill mifepristone. Michigan providers have vowed to continue access.
Michigan’s vote on whether to award the company a $175 million incentive comes after decades of trying to attract Chinese business — an effort that continues today, despite rising U.S.-China tensions.
