Current Republican caucuses in the Michigan Legislature are generally more fiscally conservative than in previous years, but the incentives for individual members to serve the political system ahead of the people are no less strong.

Prison spending provides a useful case study.

Despite having fewer prisoners, overall prison spending is 26 percent higher than in 2000, although it has fallen a very small amount since hitting a peak in 2008. This has frustrated some lawmakers. Sen. John Proos, R-St. Joseph, chairs the Senate’s appropriations subcommittee for corrections, and Mirs News reported last week he thinks such high spending “doesn’t make sense” given that “the prison system losing 14 facilities and being 8,000 prisoners lighter” than seven years ago (Mirs’ characterization of his words).

As Michigan Capitol Confidential reported Saturday, Proos and his colleagues are trying to change that, and in the process are exposing just how bloated and wasteful the system really is.

“We found that some prisons have up to four library staff members,” Proos told CapCon. In addition to $5.6 million in savings from “right-sizing” prison library staff, his committee removed funding for 300 assistant resident unit supervisors, saving another $32.1 million.

These scissors-cuts are laudable, but represent a very small portion of the $2 billion prison budget. More important, they do nothing to change an underlying incentive structure that encourages more spending instead of greater efficiency. Unless they change that dynamic, legislators risk finding themselves in a “whack-a-mole” match, with the politically-adroit prison bureaucracy and unions steadily replacing old bloat with new.

Which leads to another development recently reported by CapCon, the prison guard union’s success so far at stopping an effort to change those incentives, a very modest prison privatization bill in the House, where Republicans hold a 66-44 majority. It’s sponsored by Rep. Jon Bumstead, R-Newaygo, who told CapCon, “(W)hat we're seeing so far is the corrections unions and the UAW being very active on this.”

In plain-English, that means right now at least eight House Republicans are actively helping the union bosses halt real reform. If this holds, it will be just the latest in a long string of prison union wins.

For example, in 2002, gubernatorial candidate Jennifer Granholm publically promised the SEIU-affiliated prison guards union she would shut down Michigan’s first and only experiment in privatized prisons, a so-called “punk prison” located in Baldwin. The union later crowed in its newsletter, “Last year Governor Granholm’s budget eliminated funding for the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility . . . fulfilling a promise Candidate Granholm had made to MCO.”

Government employee unions fear privatization because they understand it changes the dynamics that generate ever-higher spending. More than one study has shown how having even a small percentage of prisoners in privatized prisons generates savings throughout the system, because managers and unions in the unprivatized prisons are forced to “sharpen their pencils” in an effort to avoid the same fate.

Applying the outcomes reported by one such study to Michigan’s prison system suggests that even a small amount of privatization here could save more than $150 million.

Revealing his frustration with system-serving colleagues, Rep. Bumstead told CapCon, “In the last election we ran on the issue of protecting taxpayer dollars and controlling costs. This legislation is something we can do now that would be keeping that promise.”

At least candidate Granholm’s promise to the union bosses was open and public. Some current House Republicans may have given similar promises, but secretly, and while leading voters to expect something different.

On the other side of the aisle, liberals who help artificially increase the cost of core government functions by making themselves handmaidens to rich and powerful government employee unions undermine their claims of wanting to dedicate more resources to helping those left behind in our society.

(Editor’s note: This commentary is an edited version of an Op-Ed by Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman that appeared in The Detroit News on March 29, 2012.)

This week, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is celebrating its recent two-year anniversary in front of the Supreme Court. The controversial law finds itself in front of the highest court in the land after 26 states — 10 of which are represented in this statement — joined together to challenge its constitutionality.

After ferocious public debate and two years of implementation, the legislation still faces an uncertain fate — and the Obama administration still finds itself working to convince a majority of Americans that its signature health care reform isn't a bad thing.

Current Gallup polling shows about 75 percent of Americans believe the law is unconstitutional.

According to the White House, individual liberty matters less than the law's big benefits, which are supposedly just around the bend. The view from the states, however, is decidedly less optimistic. The problems with the Affordable Care Act are so severe that we feel called upon to join together on behalf of our sister think tanks to enumerate the specific harmful effects of the law.

The act imposes new burdens on states in three dangerous and damaging ways.

First, it costs our businesses with new taxes. Second, it costs our residents with higher premiums. Third, it costs our states, threatening to reduce access to care for Medicaid recipients on the losing end of strained budgets.

Tallying these cumulative economic burdens explains and justifies today's stubborn public opposition. Rather than controlling costs, the law controls lives — even to the point of worsening them.

Consider the costs to businesses, which are already holding down employment in anticipation of new legislation. The Joint Committee on Taxation finds that the law will be responsible for a total of $400 billion in new taxes and fees in the next seven years. Even the Obama administration's own Department of Health & Human Services (via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) admits the law will push health care expenditures higher. Though the Obama administration continues to deny it, the calculus is simple: more health care spending equals more expenses on already-strapped businesses.

What about the impact on our fellow citizens? The law has raised, not lowered, premiums. Consulting firm Aon Hewitt estimates that premiums in the individual market are some 5 percent higher this year because of the health care law. More is to come. In Wisconsin, a study by Gorman Actuarial and MIT's Jonathan Gruber — an adviser to the president on the Affordable Care Act — sees an average premium increase of 30 percent. This will raise premiums for the 59 percent of individuals who aren't eligible for a tax credit by about a third. In Ohio, the accounting firm Milliman estimates that premiums in the individual market will increase by as much as 85 percent above current market rates.

Finally, the law wreaks havoc on our state budgets. In the first 10 years, it will increase Medicaid costs in the state of Nevada by $5.4 billion, according to the Nevada Policy Research Institute. A study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation finds that Medicaid spending in Texas will increase by an astounding $31.2 billion over the same span as people who currently qualify for Medicaid but opt out of the program are forced to enroll.

While the U.S. Supreme Court will also focus on the key issue of whether the act's individual mandate is constitutional, the law's devastating economic consequences cannot be ignored. Its intended reforms raise taxes, increase premiums, and balloon budgets while businesses, individuals, and states struggle to gain the upper hand on their finances.

Whether the Supreme Court finds it constitutional or not, this is one law America can't afford.

Co-sponsors:

• Matthew J. Brouillette, Commonwealth Foundation
• Brett Healy, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy
• Dr. Robert McClure, James Madison Institute
• Tarren Bragdon, Foundation for Government Accountability
• Forest Thigpen, Mississippi Center for Public Policy
• Brooke Rollins, Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Dann Mead Smith, Washington Policy Center
• Jonathan Bechtle, Freedom Foundation
• Jon Caldara, Independence Institute
• Andy Matthews, Nevada Policy Research Institute
• Gary Palmer, Alabama Policy Institute

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Joseph G. Lehman is president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.