Not that we expect the clowns and criminals who run state government in neighboring Illinois to care, but we do hope, for a moment at least, they cast their collective gaze north of the border to Wisconsin.
Something is happening there that Illinois’ governor and most of its legislators no doubt will hardly be able to grasp. Ditto for legislators in California, New York and other fiscally dysfunctional states.
Wisconsin recently has been holding down spending and taxes, and the state has gone from a budget deficit of more than $3 billion to a projected budget surplus.
Imagine! Setting spending priorities and stopping further raids on the pocketbooks of businesses and individuals has achieved what more spending and higher taxes could not.
The Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute has the story, based on the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s latest budget projections.
If Illinois citizens needed any further evidence of the contempt this state’s leaders have for us, here it is in this Chicago Tribune headline and subheadline:
CME, Sears tax break package expands
With multiple add-ons, the ultimate bill could cost $700 million a year.
Seven hundred million dollars a year. Here’s how Heartland’sBudget & Tax News publication started its story on the state’s record $7 billion tax increase — that’s $7 billion ANNUALLY — that became law in January of this year:
The state of Illinois is in trouble. We’re the California of the Midwest — and it’s not because we have lovely beaches. We’re moving faster every day to becoming the same failed state, financially and politically.
Gov. Pat Quinn is thinking of doing what he eventually has to do: layoff state workers and reduce the size of the state apparatus. Heartland’s Bruno Behrend, wearing my sport coat, explains how obvious is this (because Illinois’ corrupt government is awash in waste) at about the 2:30 mark of the video below.
From our friends at the Illinois Policy Institute today comes a telling, telling chart with a brief report documenting what they, we at The Heartland Institute and many others warned of when Democrat lawmakers and the state’s Democrat governor early this year sent Illinois’ personal income tax rate soaring nearly 67 percent and the state corporate tax rate climbing 46 percent.
A recent article in InfoTech & Telecom News by Loren Heal examines Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decision to cut a further 16 percent of the state’s public broadcasting budget, bringing his total cuts since 2010 to roughly 25 percent.
Such cuts have been commonplace in recent months. In Maine, cuts of as much as 19% are under consideration, New Hampshire faced 30% budget cuts, and Florida Gov. Rick Scott cut the state’s $4.5 million broadcasting budget.
Yesterday however, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey initiated a 5 year agreement which hands production of the state’s television network over to the private sector. Additionally, the state will sell its radio licenses to neighboring states for nearly $5 million. Governor Christe’s actions should be welcomed; removing government from the broadcast world addresses the state’s budgetary concerns (among other things). The Star-Ledger reports:
“We need to have robust New Jersey public broadcasting, but we need to have it in a way that is not continuing to cost the state taxpayers and can be perceived as truly independent from state government,” Christie said. The deal will save the state about $11 million a year, according to the Department of the Treasury.
Talk of such cuts is no new thing even at the national level, but even in the wake of the recent cutbacks, it is intriguing that objection is relatively little (or at least quiet). Perhaps it is because the logic of these cuts is unavoidable; the idea of federally-backed news outlets is one that should have gone out of style long ago. [click to continue…]
One year ago, I moved from the fiscal basket case that is the state of California to the second-worst-fiscal-basket-case state of Illinois. (I sure know how to pick ‘em!)
The Land of Lincoln’s state treasurer yesterday informed Gov. Pat Quinn (D) that anyone stupid enough to lend money to Illinois would be taking a “major risk.”
“If I need to send letters to the rating companies to tell them the treasurer of Illinois is opposed to more borrowing, I’m going to do that,” said Republican Treasurer Dan Rutherford.
Quinn, as is typical, was as defiant as a teenager throwing a fit that daddy took away the keys to the Mercedes.
* About 90 matters, mostly death threats against state officials, were referred to the Division of Criminal Investigation of the Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office. About a dozen remain open cases. About 30 of the 90 threats were directed at Democrats. About the same number were directed at Republicans.
Some of the most violent-sounding threats were directed at Republican Gov. Scott Walker, whose budget repair bill provisions limiting collective bargaining for state employees and teachers to wages and requiring employee contributions to health care and pension benefits provoked union protests. Some threats out-of-state were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
If you had asked me earlier this week if I thought Indiana’s SB 496, the Parent Trigger Act, would face any difficulty in conference, I would have said, in so many words, “Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop us!” And most observers probably would have replied, “Sure looks that way!”
Famous last words…
State Sen. Dennis Kruse (R-Auburn) inserted language into a conference report late yesterday that effectively neutered the bill.
In the aftermath of this winter’s union protests in Madison and related events, Wisconsinites are beginning to do the math, and they don’t like the huge numbers one single bit.
Protest-related costs are huge – and taxpayers across the state are on the hook for them.
Protesters gathered in February and March at the state Capitol in Madison over the elimination of collective bargaining for state employee benefits in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill.
They occupied the Capitol building 24/7 for several weeks, demonstrating, eating, sleeping, and microwaving meals in the Capitol building rotunda. They taped or otherwise adhered protest signs to marble walls in the interior. The building is an historical landmark, and its marble walls must be cleaned by hand with special solvents. The state architect says art conservators would do much of the work; they charge $100 per hour. He says assessing the damage alone would cost $500,000.
If you really want to be depressed about the budget deal just struck, read Mark Steyn’s post at NRO. But as an addendum to what Heartland Institute budget experrt Steve Stanek said earlier, I offer some of the thoughts of Victor Davis Hanson on Obama’s budget speech. Hanson has spent a lot of time trying to deeply analyze the meanings of the words Obama utters — going back to his 2008 campaign. And Hanson says of Wednesday’s presidential utterances:
a) Has Obama in his past careers never been called to account and so reached a point where simply being Obama means that we are not supposed to apply standards of accuracy, memory, and consistency to him in the way we do to all others?
Not that we expect the clowns and criminals who run state government in neighboring Illinois to care, but we do hope, for a moment at least, they cast their collective gaze north of the border to Wisconsin.
