From the Department of Euphemism

I object strongly to the characterization in this New York Sun editorial of Illinois as “poorly managed” or “mismanaged”:

The Constitution grants Congress the power to establish uniform laws for bankruptcies throughout the country. Yet the bankruptcy code lacks a chapter extending such protection to states, which might be why some of them have become so profligate. That combined with the coronavirus has put some of them on the brink of collapse.

This erupted in the news when the President of the Illinois senate, Don Harmon, wrote a letter to the Illinois delegation in the U.S. Congress asking a bailout of more than $40 billion for the state. Chicago Tribune blew its stack in a memorable editorial. What was so galling about it, at least to us, is that Mr. Harmon sought a $10 billion bailout directly to the Land of Lincoln’s long-underfunded pension system.

That had nothing to do with the pandemic, of course; it was about years of mismanagement of Illinois’ budget. New York and California have also dug themselves into shockingly deep holes. For any state in such circumstances to suggest that its obligations ought be paid by taxpayers in other states boggles the mind. Particularly when many states pensions are far more generous than those of private employers.

Either characterization conveys the impression that mistakes were made or that Illinois’s elected officials did not know what they were doing or miscalculated somehow.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Illinois’s elected officials, chief among them Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan who has held that post for most of the last 40 years, have worked with supreme skill to buy votes, remain in office, and enrich themselves personally through manipulations of the tax code. They didn’t just mistakenly forget to put the check for the state’s contributions to the public employees’ pension funds in the mail. They deliberately neglected to pay it, diverting the money to increase state-paid benefits in various ways. It was a corrupt strategy not inadvertence.