At City Journal John O. McGinnis reacts to Illinois voiters’ rejection of Pritzker’s graduated income tax amendment:
The defeat of the Graduated Income Tax Amendment will force a rewriting of the Democratic playbook for governing Illinois. Looking for more revenue, Democrats could now simply try to raise taxes—but those taxes must be levied at the same rate on all earners. The amendment’s resounding defeat suggests that pursuing this option would be an invitation to disaster for Democrats at the next election.
Democrats could try to cut the state’s operating budget, in the hopes that the resulting pain would motivate Illinois voters to embrace the progressive tax amendment in the future. But the amendment lost badly, and the personal circumstances of Madigan and Pritzker make them unlikely champions for a successful retry.
The best way out of the state’s corner is to pass real pension reform and a program for economic growth to make the measures less biting.
He’s dreaming. Illinois politicians will continue to borrow until they can’t borrow any more, a day that is fast approaching. Then they’ll raise taxes until raising taxes actually generates less revenue, another day that is fast approaching. The last time the city of Chicago increased its sales tax it generated very little new revenue (as I predicted), driving businesses out of the city. Then they’ll cut back on every state service that won’t get them physically attacked or their houses burned down. Then they’ll try to amend the state’s constitution again. Anything to avoid taking the steps that will actually solve the problems but risk their jobs.
The thing that is most easily, and for a while, invisibly cut is infrastructure: roads, water and sewerage systems, buses and trains, public buildings, police and fire departments… Eventually the infrastructure stops working, bridges fall down, response times become infinities, but that takes time, and the pols are retired to Florida by the time the pain becomes unbearable.
That won’t serve their purposes—they don’t want the least visible but the most visible.