Illinois Has a Budget, But Does It Have a Plan?

Illinois has a budget and everybody has sighed a sigh of relief (well, not everybody, but lots of people).  Taxes are up.  Some changes were made, I guess (whether the changes constitute the kinds of changes that Illinois needs for the long run is something I don’t know; we’ll find out).  The budget is probably good for the state universities, and it will help social service providers finally get paid, which is good.  But while it’s a budget, it’s not a plan.

It pays bills for a year, but does it provide a way to pay off our bills – and keep them paid off?  Does it do anything to solve the issue of the sustainability of Illinois’s public pension systems?  Bottom line, will it make Illinois the kind of state that people want to move into, rather than out of? 

What Illinois needs is not a budget for one year, Illinois needs a plan for ten years – or even twenty years.  And for that, Illinois doesn’t need regular old politicians; it needs leaders.

Politicians look to the next election.  The key for them is not doing what the state needs, but making sure they don’t get blamed for doing anything hard.  They won’t do anything hard, or even talk about doing anything hard, unless they can figure out a way to get the other side to do it too – so they can’t get blamed.  It’s not about solving Illinois’s problems; it’s about staying in office.

That’s not what Illinois needs.  What Illinois needs is somebody who will propose a plan for more than the next year or the next election cycle.  Somebody who will talk about the necessary taxes to pay our bills, instead of leaving them to our children – and their children.  Somebody who will talk about what we need to do to keep expenses under control (because we have all those bills to pay and pensions to fund).  And somebody who will talk about how we can try to make government work better, so we can get more done for the money we pay.  Because the way to judge to government programs isn’t by how much they spend but by how much they do.  And if there is a way to do more for the same amount of money, what’s wrong with that?

We need people who are willing to propose the hard things that are necessary, not just the easy things the other party will vote for, too.

What we need are people in Springfield who don’t confuse leadership with longevity.  We’ve had longevity.  What we need is leadership.