The federal government took the nation further into debt during the COVID-19 pandemic to bail out the states. Congress presumed that state tax revenues would be wiped out by lockdown policies and economic turmoil. Except that state revenues didn’t go down. They went up.

State taxes collected $34.0 billion in the 2018-19 fiscal year. They collected a little more the following year, at the start of the pandemic. Then revenue spiked to $38.9 billion in the 2020-21 fiscal year, and it’s up to $44.4 billion in the current fiscal year. That’s an increase well above inflation over the period, even accounting for the bump in inflation that followed lockdowns and federal spending increases.

So states got bailed out of revenue losses that never happened. State governments, including Michigan, kept the checks anyway.

Michigan’s lawmakers used higher revenues from their own taxes, as well as federal largesse, to increase the state budget from $58.3 billion before the pandemic to $75.2 billion in fiscal year 2020-21. State spending has increased to $81.2 billion since then. State tax revenue did not continue to increase at the rate seen in the 2020-21 fiscal year, but it remained high and kept growing.

COVID and stimulus money from the federal government was temporary. But that does not mean the amount of federal money flowing to Michigan has receded to where it was before the pandemic. It’s up by $10 billion — around $2,500 per household in Michigan — and up 14.6% when adjusted for inflation. All told, the inputs into state government are up, and they’re up by a lot. Outcomes are a different story. Spending on K-12 education is up by a lot, and test scores are down. Roads are still not being put together faster than they fall apart. More people are covered by Medicaid, and I don’t have a good measure of whether that’s improved life for them.

State governments were the first in line for extra money when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But it’s not like the federal government had special money it could tap. It all comes from taxpayers. It’s unlikely that this rapid growth in spending of taxpayer dollars has delivered good outcomes to citizens.