Dear Governor Snyder,

With all due respect, let me tell you why your plan to get Michigan working and growing again is skewed.  Your plan asks those of us who have been sacrificing for quite a while now, to take another hit.  Many of the people you are targeting, and you are targeting us, have spouses who have been laid off, so we are the sole support;  cutting our wages, or toying with our benefits will get Michigan working and growing again?  I encourage you to elaborate, please give me concrete details that will explain how.  I am a school teacher.  I make a wage that requires me to think about how I spend my money.  When I was raising my family it was important to budget, and now that my spouse is retired, budgeting is still very much a part of our life.  We do not live elaborately, but we do live comfortably.  I should be okay with not living comfortably when I have done everything the government is telling students today to do; excel in high school, go to college, get a job, continue your education, and work really hard?   I have paid taxes all of my working life, as has my husband.  We have paid a lot of taxes.  The people who run the government have not always made smart decisions with how taxpayers' money should be spent.  I'm sorry Governor Snyder, I am focused on what went wrong, and I am not willing to let you, a very wealthy man, tell me that I should not focus on who is to blame for the mess Michigan is in, and just start looking to the future!  You are determining a very bleak future for me.  Of course reducing health care benefits for public employees is huge in your plan, could you please start with all of those legislators who no longer work for the government but continue to receive free health care even if they only worked for six years?  Do you not recognize that what you are proposing, these reforms that you have said will be painful, will not be painful for you and yours?  These reforms will not be painful for many of our elected officials because they are not dependent on only their government salary and expense account,  yet they will vote to drastically alter my life.  You and your buddies in the house and the senate will not be taking the hit, people like me will.  Now here's what you don't get; cut my pay, reduce my health benefits, and I won't be spending any money!  How exactly is that helping the economy?  It makes me sick just to think about it, but  now I won't be able to afford to go to the doctor in time to save my life, so I will die and then I will be just one more working American that my government didn't  care about at all.
Rosemary