The editors of Crain’s Chicago Business exhort the Democrat-dominated legislature to take action on the state’s budget:
Here’s the Illinois Democrats’ guide to negotiation and compromise:
1. Pass a state budget with more spending than revenue and refuse to own up to its real costs.
2. Label the Republican governor an extremist for pointing out the obvious disconnect.
3. Hold breath until other (poor) people turn blue. Then blame the governor.Illinois is well into its second month without a full state budget, continuing its shameful tradition of political incompetence and arrogance. Important bills, such as one that provides some temporary relief for Chicago’s shaky pension finances, have been bottled up, apparently out of personal pique. Not only is it embarrassing, but this failure of legislators to do the most basic part of their jobs soon may have real impact on the low-income and special-needs populations that Democrats profess to be fighting for.
Voters might begin to get the idea that the populations that the Democrats in the state legislature are “fighting for” are all either officeholders or their donors.
The Democrats don’t need the governor’s permission to act. They seek it from pure political cowardice and calculation. So far the governor hasn’t risen to the bait.
However, the governor himself isn’t pure as the driven snow:
Rauner has made plenty of rookie mistakes during his first months in office. Unfortunately, he’s not above some rather juvenile name-callingE, and some of his demands to limit collective bargaining sound more punitive than productive. But this former private-equity executive has plenty of experience at cutting a deal. He has signaled over and over again that he’s prepared to compromise with Democrats, including raising taxes, a move that’s unlikely to endear him to his Republican base. But he understandably wants some things in return, including changes in the workers’ comp system and prevailing wage rules for government projects, and a vote on a term-limits proposal.
Even if the governor gets everything he’s asked for it still will only be the first step in what would presumably be the lengthy process of getting Illinois back on the right course and, frankly, as Lord Keynes put it, in the long run we’re all dead. I’d like to see the big picture. I’d like the governor to flesh out his plan a bit. Does he have one?
” I’d like to see the big picture. I’d like the governor to flesh out his plan a bit. Does he have one?”
I’m reminded of a friend of mine, and how her Mom’s health took a turn for the worst earlier this year. Lynn, my friend, flew back east to be with her. But the doctor’s prognosis was not encouraging. He said that her Mom had neglected her health for too many years, including managing her diabetes. She was starting to go into organ failure and that the only advice he could give was to be sure “her affairs were in order.” The woman passed away in April.
When I read about Illinois and it’s ongoing difficulties, can the health of a state mimic that of a human, where, if signs and symptoms are dismissed or put on the back burner for too long, there is no viable remedy to be fleshed out? I have the same concerns about CA as well, being that our fiscal well being, IMO, has merely been superficially modified in order to appeal to the democratic orthodoxy running this state.
There are plenty of viable remedies for Illinois. As me auld mither used to say “We can afford anything we want but we can’t afford everything we want.” For the last half century and beyond Illinois’s politicians have been promising everything we want. Now that they can’t deliver they don’t want to break the bad news that some of the things that were promised just can’t be delivered.
That doesn’t mean the remedies are not viable just that they’re not pleasant or popular.
Dave,
The big problem is that unpleasant/unpopular remedies are usually the last ditch choices of people. It seems that in today’s world, leaning away from painful remedies, is even more accented with so many now attached to the hip of governmental social programs. There is just so much self-centerness, accepted public abrasiveness, divisiveness, and anger — it all is becoming a tortured pot of unmet expectations. I personally can’t see success in landing a solution, let alone having a soft one.