Illinois Democrats went all-in Thursday with their election-year class warfare theme as Speaker Michael Madigan pitched the idea of asking voters to raise taxes on millionaires, Senate President John Cullerton advanced a minimum-wage increase and Gov. Pat Quinn compared wealthy opponent Bruce Rauner to TV villain Mr. Burns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The last two of these are unsurprising \u2014 we can expect to see a lot more along the same lines in the coming months, as the Democrats aggressively paint Rauner as someone who only cares about enriching \u201cthe 1%\u201d at the expense of the rest of us, regardless of the truthfulness of those allegations.<\/p>\n
But the first of these is a pretty good illustration of why Illinois is so broken.<\/p>\n
In the first place, there are two ways to get an amendment onto the ballot: \u00a0the hard way, collecting petitions, and the easy way, possessing a supermajority (the result of having a majority during redistricting and going all-out to draw advantageous districts) which simply votes to put the amendment onto the ballot. \u00a0Good-government groups working for independent redistricting get the hard route. \u00a0Entrenched politicians looking for a way to put an issue on the ballot that fits with and reinforces their attacks on their opponent get the easy route.<\/p>\n
The idea itself is simple: \u00a0the Illinois personal income tax rate is a flat rate, currently 5%. \u00a0Madigan\u2019s proposal (which so far seems to be a proposal, with few concrete details) is to add an additional tax of 3% for everyone with income of over $1,000,000, with the revenue raised to be doled out on a per-head basis to schools. <\/p>\n
What\u2019s so magical about $1,000,000? \u00a0Nothing really, except that it\u2019s symbolic and round. \u00a0Why a constitutional amendment? \u00a0Because currently the Illinois constitution requires a flat tax. \u00a0Why not amend the constitution to allow for graduated tax rates, and then fix the particular rates\/brackets with legislation, so they can be adjusted over time? \u00a0Because it\u2019s about forcing your opponents to line up on the question of whether they\u2019re on the side of \u201cmillionaires\u201d or \u201cthe people,\u201d and causing them to squirm if they object.<\/p>\n
(Would the new tax actually benefit school kids, in the long term? \u00a0Of course not. \u00a0If a new stream of revenue is dedicated to schools, then there\u2019s plenty of room for existing funding to be cut. \u00a0Anyone who believes this is going to \u201chelp the kids\u201d probably also believed that the so-called temporary income tax increase, from 3% to 5%, was actually temporary. \u00a0But it\u2019s not about helping \u201cthe children\u201d; it\u2019s about helping Quinn.)<\/p>\n
If such a tax were passed, and millionaires paid a tax rate of 8%, would they leave the state? \u00a0Here\u2019s what Madigan says:<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, if they\u2019re in Illinois today, they\u2019re probably so much in love with Illinois that they\u2019re not going to leave.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, I thought this was flaky too. \u00a0But I imagine that Madigan is just acknowledging that Illinois\u2019 business climate is already pretty lousy, and the wealthy have stayed put due to family ties, or because it\u2019s not so easy to uproot a business. \u00a0But the future of Illinois depends on more than keeping millionaires around and siphoning off their wealth. \u00a0Perhaps Madigan\u2019s mindset, after so many years in Illinois politics, is truly one in which wealth is created by pay-to-play and other political manoeuvers, so he really doesn\u2019t understand what it takes to have a healthy economy.<\/p>\n
But with respect to both the minimum wage hike and the \u201ctax the rich\u201d scheme, the Democrats are demonstrating that political power is more important to them than a prosperous state.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here\u2019s the first paragraph in the lead article in the Chicago Tribune today: Illinois Democrats went all-in Thursday with their election-year class warfare theme as Speaker Michael Madigan pitched the idea of asking voters to raise taxes on millionaires, Senate President John Cullerton advanced a minimum-wage increase and Gov. Pat Quinn compared wealthy opponent Bruce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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