Every political drama needs a convenient heavy, someone to blame when things don’t go exactly as planned. A Ted Kennedy, a Jesse Helms or, more recently, a Bob Dole.
Illinois’ budget impasse is admittedly a parochial, low-grade drama, but there is nonetheless a heavy: Sen. Emil Jones of Chicago, the leader of the Senate Democrats.
It is Jones who has scuttled the tenuous June 29 budget agreement, sending Illinois into the new fiscal year without a plan to spend some $30 billion and threatening tens of millions of dollars of Medicaid payments to more than 1,000 hospitals and nursing homes.
Or so the script says.
“I’m not the one holding it up,” Jones said. “We could have been out of here last month, but they decided to take three weeks off.”
In a building inhabited by elected ideologues, political bullies, Machiavellian schemers and assorted manipulators, Jones is a curious nominee for villain of the moment, not because of what he has done, but because of what he is.
The 57-year-old Jones represents the Far South Side of Chicago.
While he has served in the General Assembly for 21 years, Jones is an inexperienced leader of a diverse, fractious and difficult Democratic caucus.
Bulky, broad and bull-necked, Jones does not sport the more polished and perhaps more articulate manner of his leadership colleagues, who are old hands at representing their respective caucuses.
In fact, Jones’ leadership qualities have been called into question by some members in his own caucus, and his hold on the membership could be described as tenuous. He is well-liked, but Democrats wonder if he is up to the job.
But Jones’ resume fills the current partisan need in a budget standoff that is framed in terms guaranteed to polarize: Us versus them. Suburbs versus city. Workers versus welfare. Taxpayers versus tax-eaters. And, by inference, white versus black.
Jones’ vulnerability as a beleaguered leader made him a more likely target.
In the week since the tentative budget accord fell apart, Gov. Jim Edgar and other Republicans have singled out Jones, who is the only black among the four legislative leaders, and his caucus as the reason there is no budget.
The underlying reason, they say, is Jones’ desire to get more money for welfare.
The logjam, House Republican Leader Lee Daniels said Thursday, “has been public aid . . . Sen. Jones, of course, has sought welfare increases that keep people on welfare rolls.”
Republican Senate President James “Pate” Philip disparaged welfare recipients by saying the grant increase would be blown on lottery tickets.
And Edgar chipped in by wondering aloud why black lawmakers would balk at a tax for Medicaid.
That is the essence of the dispute, an otherwise arcane numerical struggle bolstered by stereotypes and presented by Republican leaders as a black Chicago lawmaker representing his natural constituency (read black welfare recipients) at the expense of working men and women.
“Edgar probably assumes that just because you are a minority legislator that the only thing that concerns you is public aid. It’s unfortunate that his scope is that narrow,” Jones said in an interview. “All minorities are not monolithical, so why would he make such a statement?”
Jones is no babe in the woods in the political arena. He rose through ward politics and has been known to play the class distinction card in Springfield.
He recently has asked why he should be concerned about rich people having to pay the $6.30 daily tax on nursing home residents, informally known as the “granny tax.” Jones refers to it as “the Rockefeller tax.”
But in this debate the forces are stacked against Jones.
Welfare has proven to be a powerful political weapon nationwide in campaigns aimed at disenchanted white voters.
In most states, public aid spending has overtaken elementary and secondary education budgets, making it the largest single state expenditure.
In the last 20 years, Medicaid spending has skyrocketed, while education spending has barely kept pace with inflation.
The resulting squeeze on the Illinois budget has left less money available for education and increased the pressure on local property taxes. And lawmakers have heard the squeals of property taxpayers.
Disputes over public aid spending are commonplace in the state, especially since that budget is the major reason there is less discretionary money for lawmakers to spend.
But the current budget stalemate has baffled and angered lawmakers who hint that Democrats, whose constituents have benefited from the shift toward more spending for welfare, should not block the budget process.
“Maybe this is your way of getting your vengeance on somebody else,” Sen. Aldo DeAngelis (R-Olympia Fields) said in Senate debate aimed at Jones, “but, folks, you’re doing it the wrong way because you’re holding your people hostage in the process.
“It’s ludicrous. It is ludicrous for anyone to assume that,” said Jones, whose Senate district includes the racially mixed, upper-middle-class neighborhood of Beverly-Morgan Park, as well as the black middle-class neighborhood of Gresham.
“It’s the old cliche. Most of the people in the city in nursing homes don’t pay the granny tax,” said Jones, referring to the Medicaid assessment that expired June 30. The replacement for the tax, a 14-cent cigarette tax increase, is mired in the budget impasse.
Welfare’s allure as a political blunt instrument helped produce a double standard in the stalemate.
Jones was attacked for balking at the budget agreement, but when House Speaker Michael Madigan, arguably the most influential figure in the Capitol, said he could not deliver the votes to pass the cigarette tax increase, there was not a peep of criticism about his reneging on an agreement, even though few believed Madigan’s claim.
The lingering perception of the so-called welfare mother, promoted in the 1980s by President Ronald Reagan and kept alive today, is that of a black woman with no job, more children than she can keep track of, and who relies on food stamps and monthly checks from the state.
The reality of public aid in Illinois is that:
– most recipients are white;
– the increase in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which Edgar proposed but has shown little stomach for supporting, costs $40 million in an overall $6.24 billion public aid budget;
Jones, a former Chicago sewer inspector, is reluctant to respond to many of the attacks, saying, “If I were to constantly respond to everything Pate (Philip) says . . . my blood pressure would go up through the ceiling.”
But he must wonder at times if he has simply changed sewers.
