It was outrageous — cowardly and irresponsible, bordering on dishonest — what the governor and state lawmakers did on taxes and spending.
I’m not talking about this week.
I’m talking about the last two decades, during which elected officials of both parties used all manner of accounting tricks and hand-waving assumptions to allow them to spend more than they took in while not raising taxes.
Critics rightly observed that they were metaphorically kicking the can down the road, forcing future lawmakers to make the tough, unpopular decisions when the bills inevitably came due, and forcing future taxpayers to pay the price.
Then came the recession, filling that can with the leaden weights of debt and deficit and the rocks of looming insolvency. Now we’ve stubbed our collective toe on it and, understandably, many of us are cursing and hopping around.
The state income tax hike to 5 percent from 3 percent approved Wednesday morning hurts, no question. And the shock, if not the pain, would have been diminished if lawmakers had made sure all along we were living within our means, paying for what we were getting instead of sending the bill to the next generation.
Alas and ouch.
But give credit to the Democrats — they were the only ones who voted for the hike — for at least attempting to atone for the bipartisan sins of the past rather than perpetuating the popular fiction that we can cut and tweak our way out of an estimated $15 billion hole.
Does Illinois spend too much? Sure. There probably isn’t a unit of government on the planet that runs perfectly lean. But recent surveys put us 43rd when you rank the states by spending as a share of gross domestic product and 49th in the number of state employees per capita.
The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability calculates that state spending, adjusted for inflation and population growth, is down 6.7 percent over the past decade, and is 5 percent lower than it was in 1995 under Republican Gov. Jim Edgar.
Have Illinois residents been overtaxed? Tables published in 2008 by the Tax Foundation placed us 30th, roughly middle of the pack, in combined state and local tax burden, while data from the Federation of Tax Administrators says 45 of the 50 states collect a greater percentage of personal income in taxes and fees than Illinois does.
We’ll move higher in those ratings with the new tax rates, but “we’re still going to be a bottom 15 state in overall state and local taxes, and still lower in the rankings than Indiana and Wisconsin,” said Center for Tax and Budget Accountability director Ralph Martire, alluding to the states that have been taunting Illinois this week.
And we’ll still be facing the prospect of service cuts. These higher taxes will help pay our old bills, help us start to catch up to our staggering pension obligations, boost our credit rating and bring state spending more in line with revenues.
But there’s no windfall here. No new hogs-at-the-trough boondoggles to boil the blood. In fact, with the associated spending cap, it’s likely that state outlays for education, public safety, and health and human services will fall in the coming years.
Survey after survey shows that the public doesn’t want such programs cut, even though they don’t want to pay taxes to support them. And election after election shows that voters reward politicians who try to reconcile these conflicting desires by giving that can a swift kick.
Still, it’s hard to admire the Democrats for their courage — approving a tax hike larger than you campaigned on in a lame-duck session nearly two years until the next election is more than a bit yellow.
But they still control both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion. Can they now impose significant enough reforms on Medicaid, the pension system and other state agencies to avoid cuts in vital services? Are they brave enough to make it realistic that much of this income tax hike really is only temporary, as the legislation says? Can they find common cause with Republicans in ushering in a new era of responsibility and transparency?
If they can, the pain will subside. If they can’t, a sore toe will be the least of their problems.
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