{"id":11673,"date":"2018-11-07T09:02:04","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T15:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=11673"},"modified":"2018-11-07T09:02:04","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T15:02:04","slug":"the-one-in-which-illinois-is-fed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/11\/the-one-in-which-illinois-is-fed.html","title":{"rendered":"The one in which Illinois is f’ed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

Very few things about this election were a surprise.<\/p>\n

The Democrats took the House \u2013 not a surprise.<\/p>\n

The GOP held the Senate \u2013 not a surprise, though I was surprised that they increased the number of seats.<\/p>\n

Pritzker took the Illinois governor\u2019s office, and now control every statewide office \u2013 not a surprise.<\/p>\n

The Democrats regained their supermajority in the Illinois House<\/a>, and then some, and increased their level of supermajority in the Illinois Senate \u2013 not a surprise, necessarily (I wasn\u2019t really able to find local reporting on prospects for this), but I\u2019d say the biggest disappointment of the night, especially because two local GOP incumbents, one in the district across the street and the other in our own district, with respect to whom we were flooded with mailers from his opponent, lost.\u00a0 (Ann Gillespie\u2019s perky flyer says, \u201cI won\u2019t accept a pension.\u201d\u00a0 Big deal, she\u2019s a retired pharma executive; she\u2019s already got a generous pension.\u00a0 But that\u2019s a drop in the bucket compared to the massive underfunding and overpromising of Illinois pubic public pensions.)<\/p>\n

So at the federal level, we won\u2019t be seeing any meaningful legislation for the next two years, and the Democrats will spend their time with investigations of Trump\u2019s nefarious activities and passing legislation that they know the Senate won\u2019t take up, but that won\u2019t be much different than the House under GOP control during Obama\u2019s presidency, except that instead of Benghazi and go-nowhere Obamacare repeal, we\u2019ll have investigations into Russia, border enforcement, Trump\u2019s tax returns, etc, and a go-nowhere single-payer healthcare system.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a pleasant prospect but it\u2019s not as if the GOP has been passing bang-up stellar legislation over the past two years that we would have expected them to continue to do otherwise.<\/p>\n

Or, alternatively, given that we\u2019re learning that neither party really cares all that much about deficits, we\u2019ll see some of that Trumpian dealmaking that we were promised \u2014 not about anything that really matters, like an immigration bill in which both sides do some meaningful compromising, but in the form of a large quantity of infrastructure spending.<\/p>\n

But on the state level, well, Pritzker has promised one spending hike after the next, all to be funded by a graduated income tax just as soon as voters authorize it in 2020 (because our constitution forbids such, so it requires a voter-passed constitutional amendment).\u00a0 (What will he do in the meantime?\u00a0 Raise taxes on everyone?\u00a0 Use accounting tricks to start spending immediately with the promise it\u2019ll all be put right after the tax hike is implemented?\u00a0 Or just pass bills with an effective date of \u201cthe day after Election Day, 2020\u201d?)\u00a0 He has refused to reveal what sort of tax brackets he has in mind \u2013 that is, just how large a burden he\u2019ll impose on the middle class and just how many wealthy people will flee the state.\u00a0 And at the same time, he has no interest in any sort of pension reform<\/a>, despite the fact that it is blowing its own massive hole in the state budget.<\/p>\n

And the super-supermajority of Democrats?\u00a0 One presumes that the endless anti-Tom Rooney flyers were not coming from Ann Gillespie\u2019s personal wealth, but from the Madigan\/Prizker war chest, and that this process was repeated over and over again in such a manner as to cow those Democrats into going along with Madigan\/Prizker spending and taxing plans so long as they are able to bring some bacon home to their constituents.\u00a0 (\u201cYes, your tax rate has doubled, but don\u2019t you like the new walking paths your tax money paid for?\u201d)<\/p>\n

And, again, I knew Pritzker would win and Rauner didn\u2019t deserve to win anyway.\u00a0 But what I didn\u2019t know \u2013 because I couldn\u2019t find relevant information \u2013 was that he wouldn\u2019t have any sort of check on him in terms of a strong enough GOP minority to maybe, to some slim degree, combine with hesitant Democrats to prevent the worst of his spending excesses.<\/p>\n

So, readers, where should we move to?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0Illinois state capitol; https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Illinoiscapitol2.jpg<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very few things about this election were a surprise. The Democrats took the House \u2013 not a surprise. The GOP held the Senate \u2013 not a surprise, though I was surprised that they increased the number of seats. Pritzker took the Illinois governor\u2019s office, and now control every statewide office \u2013 not a surprise. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[829,828],"class_list":["post-11673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-illinois-2018-election","tag-j-b-pritzker"],"yoast_head":"\nThe one in which Illinois is f'ed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Very few things about this election were a surprise. The Democrats took the House - not a surprise. 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