Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, running to be the first Republican elected to the Senate from Michigan this century, offered a range of ideas to combat the housing-cost crisis, improve education, and protect the auto industry.
Rogers, who lost to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) in 2024, is the likely GOP nominee again this year in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI). He sat for a one-on-one with WOOD-TV political reporter Rick Albin in the Grand Hotel Theatre to kick off the third day of the 2026 Mackinac Policy Conference, hours before a debate on the same stage featuring the three major candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.
“We also have to be bold enough to accept the fact that we are a state that is in decline, and I would argue the last eight years we accelerated that decline by increasing costs on doing business, increasing regulation, making it harder for our oil and gas producers here in the state of Michigan to actually produce oil and gas that we need desperately,” Rogers said. “You’ve got to start unwinding those things.”
To address the state’s housing affordability challenges, Rogers offered an array of solutions to “nibble away at this.”
“If you can’t buy your first home until you’re 41, that’s a crisis,” he said.
Notably, he said the Home Builders Association of Michigan estimates that regulations account for $94,000 of the building costs. He did not offer any specific regulations to remove or indicate how, as a senator, he could make changes to state regulations.
He did, however, propose two new ways that Congress could make homebuying more affordable. Rogers, who as a state senator in 1999 authored the law that allowed for 529 post-secondary education savings accounts in Michigan, wants to expand that program.
“We can do the same thing for down payments on houses, get the community involved in helping younger folks get that down payment early,” he said.
Rogers also wants Congress to require rent payments to count towards credit scores.
“So that when you go into the bank, you don’t get the highest interest rate, you get the best interest rate. Right now, that doesn’t count,” he said. “You pay rent for seven or eight or nine or 10 years, it doesn’t count toward your credit score. I think that’s wrong.”
Rogers also expressed concerns about how the state’s educational system is failing its children and its businesses and described the connection between illiteracy and crime.
“The federal government, using Title I money, can help schools here in the state focus on reading in the third grade,” he said.
His major focuses, though, was vocational training, noting that his father was a shop teacher and the loss of programs that once were de rigueur in American high schools.
“I think we give kids a purpose, expose them to shop, and give them great careers in the skilled trades, which we have a massive need for,” he said. “Ford came out and said, by the way, they have 5,000 jobs that pay $150,000 a year and don’t require a college degree, but they can’t fill them. How many high school or college graduates are making 150 grand a year? Not very many.”
Rogers offered support for a bill introduced by Slotkin and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) to ban the manufacture and sale of Chinese cars in the U.S.
“The biggest existential threat to the United States automobile industry is China producing cars in the United States. Full stop,” Rogers said. “We can’t let that happen. I’m a free enterprise guy, but China does not want to make a profit by building cars in the United States. They want to supplant the United States’ ability to produce automobiles in the world, and they have been cleaning our clock around the rest of the world.”
Rogers expressed disappointment that Canada is not holding that line.
“They dropped the tariff rate to about 6% on Chinese-made vehicles, and then they upped their count that you could allow in,” he said. “People don’t realize how much Michigan has content in the cars that are built in Canada. Our content providers, you talk to a content provider around the state, they got beads of sweat on their forehead, they know that is an existential threat to them, and it’s going to supplant US content in cars that are built in Canada.”
Related | Opinion: Lifting Restrictions on Chinese Cars Could Devastate U.S. Auto Industry
This session was developed in coordination with the Michigan Debate Commission, sponsored by Consumers Energy, and editorially crafted in partnership with Crain’s Content Studio.
