"A Governor in Denial" A Green Party Response to Governor Rod Blagojevich's 2006 State of the State Address
By Rich Whitney, Illinois Green Party Candidate for Governor
Rod Blagojevich’s 2006 State of the State Address was an exercise in deception. It didn’t accurately depict the true state of our State. It ignored gaping problems. It contained several “feel good” sounding proposals but failed to identify the flaws and shortcomings contained therein. Above all, it failed to even acknowledge the proverbial “elephant in the living room” – the joint failure of the Blagojevich administration and the Illinois State Legislature to deal with our State’s failed system of taxation and budgeting, which threatens the well-being of future generations of schoolchildren, college students, pensioners and taxpayers in general.
What the speech mainly signifies is that Rod Blagojevich will try to buy an election victory by throwing more government dollars that we can’t afford to spend on a few short-term road projects and school construction projects, while ignoring the impact of his irresponsible budgetary decisions on future generations.
The Whitney for Governor campaign will do everything in its power to persuade voters not to fall for such a ploy. We’re like the ant in the ant-and-the-grasshopper fable. A little hard work now can help us avoid the folly being urged on us by the current governor, who is as careless about the future as the fabled grasshopper.
What is the real State of the State in 2006? Let’s look at a few realities:
! The State still has not solved its budget crisis. As a consequence, state services and programs – from assisted living facilities to correctional facilities, to the Department of Natural Resources, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and environmental programs, to schools and universities, to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and tourism programs, to the Department of Children and Family Services – are all struggling to make do with less money, and simply cannot maintain quality service. The long-term failure to adequately fund the State’s public pension systems means that we will face deeper budget crises in the years ahead, causing even deeper cuts and/or broken promises to future pensioners – unless we enact a major overhaul to our tax system now.
! Unemployment remains at unacceptably high levels, while manufacturing and other high-paying jobs continue to decline. In 2004, 12.2 percent of Illinoisans lived below the national poverty line, as did 17.7 percent of its children. Since 1999, median household income in Illinois dropped by more than 12 percent, the second sharpest decline in the nation and more than triple the rate of decline nationwide.
! Despite Governor Blagojevich’s highly touted initiatives to bring health-care to children, the percentage of Illinoisans lacking any health insurance coverage stood at 14 percent in 2004, up from 10.9 percent in 1990.
! Although Illinois has the fifth-highest Gross State Product in the nation, it ranks 48th in education spending. Sixty percent of its funding comes from property taxes, which has also given Illinois one of the largest gaps between rich school districts and poor school districts in the United States. In 2003-04, the highest spending school district in Illinois spent $19,361 more per pupil than the lowest spending school district, increasing the gap by $4,000 compared to the year before. More and more school districts in Illinois are in deficit spending, and the number of schools facing serious academic performance problems has risen dramatically. Not surprisingly, Illinois also has some of the worst school achievement gaps in the country and the overall performance of its schools has been mediocre at best. Meanwhile, tuition and fees at our colleges and universities continue to climb, making higher education out of the financial reach of more and more students from working families.
In the face of these realities, Rod Blagojevich selectively cited a few “factoids” in an attempt to put a smiley face over a dismal picture. For example, he claims that Illinois has “invested more money in its schools in the last three years than any other state in the Midwest.” But what is he talking about? Capital spending on school construction or spending on education itself? Either way, the fact that Illinois may eclipse other states, that may be even more disgraceful in their failure to support schools, hardly justifies praise. Illinois is still spending over $1,200 less per pupil than the state foundation level recommended by the Education Funding Advisory Board.
Blagojevich claims that Illinois has made progress toward achieving equality for African-Americans and Latinos under his leadership. In fact, the gap between White and African-American and Hispanic wage rates has grown in recent years – while the State’s Department of Human Rights is yet another agency that does not receive the financial support it needs to do an adequate job.
Some of the things that Blagojevich calls “progress” do not warrant that description. He spoke of “a bipartisan effort to reduce medical malpractice costs,” when in fact he signed a bill that did little to address the real causes of soaring malpractice rates, but pandered to the insurance industry by curtailing the rights of victims to an award determined by a jury of their peers.
He actually had the gall to brag about supporting the notorious boondoggle known as the Peotone Airport project.
He called for various road-building projects that were plainly calculated to reward his allies in the State Legislature, not serve the interests of the people. For example, his proposal to “widen Route 13 from Marion to Carterville” is a ludicrous venture that cannot be justified on the basis of relieving traffic congestion or anything else. It does, however, amount to a healthy slice of pork for such Democratic allies as Rep. Brandon Phelps and State Senator Gary Forby.
This is the same kind of “pay for play” politics that has made many State workers and job applicants angry, as they see evidence that some State jobs and benefits are being awarded on the basis of political patronage, not merit. It’s the same kind of pay for play politics that prompts Governor Blagojevich to suddenly promote keno (yet another gambling game that preys largely on lower-income workers) as a means of funding schools, after the gambling “industry” donates over $10,000 to the Blagojevich campaign – and expect voters to believe that this is just a coincidence.
Blagojevich spoke of creating 230,000 jobs through capital “improvement” projects – most of them consisting of road construction jobs, with a far lesser sum being devoted to public transportation and schools. This reflects more of the same distorted priorities that we have come to expect from both Democratic and Republican administrations in Springfield. At a time when global warming threatens to wreak havoc on human society and all life on the planet; at a time when it is obvious that the era of cheap oil is on the way out, Blagojevich continues the trend of favoring the automobile over other forms of transportation. He wants more roads and highways – meaning more urban sprawl, more lost time and lost money spent commuting, more human isolation and alienation – and more environmental destruction. Automobiles account for about one-half of all air pollution emissions in the United States and are the biggest producers of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, emitting about one-quarter of the total. When are politicians like Blagojevich going to get the message that we need a major shift in our transportation priorities now – focusing on more energy-efficient modern high-speed rail and light rail systems, better urban planning to shorten distances between homes and workplaces and promote bike and pedestrian traffic?
This projected creation of 230,000 new (but mostly temporary) jobs, by the way, is to be funded by yet more sales of bonds, increasing the state’s indebtedness – and long-term budget problems – by another $3.2 billion.
But that seems to be the Blagojevich way. Instead of real solutions, he presents gimmicks that will cost the State money without solving the underlying problems. Tuition going up? Let’s give $1,000 to every freshman and sophomore who maintains a B average or better. Will that really make college more affordable to poor, working-class or middle-class students? Not much. Is there a sound plan to pay for it? Probably not. But it does create the appearance that Rod Blagojevich is a friend of higher education.
Is lack of health-care coverage a serious and growing problem in Illinois, as in the rest of the nation? You bet. Let’s come up with something called All Kids to allow all children in the State to have access to health care. Never mind the details on funding, and on how doctors get paid, and whether or not it will work; it sounds good. Now (he says, in the State of the State address) lets follow that with a new plan to cover Veterans. But does this piecemeal approach to providing adequate health coverage get to the core of the problem – the steady erosion of health insurance coverage by private employers? No. What it mainly does is score some political points, while creating new and unnecessary bureaucracies. Instead of a real solution – universal health care, through a comprehensive, single-payer system – we get a patchwork of plans. What’s next? A new plan to provide health coverage to all persons whose name ends in A through C? All Scorpios and Libras? All Siamese twins? All persons who were born on a Tuesday?
To be sure, there are a few points that Blagojevich spoke about that do make sense and that, in general, I would support as well. Raising the minimum wage. Imposing tougher regulations on mercury emissions. But even on these points, Blagojevich’s fine words haven’t always been matched by equivalent deeds. If he is really interested in reducing mercury emissions, why did his administration give the green light to a mine-mouth coal-fired plant – the Peabody Coal plant in Marissa, Illinois – that does not use the best available technology to reduce mercury and other harmful emissions, and that will likely contaminate more of our streams, lakes and ponds in Southern Illinois?
In sharp contrast to Mr. Blagojevich, I offer some real solutions that are based on a realistic appraisal of the State’s problems – beginning with the budget.
Our tax structure in Illinois is fundamentally unfair, placing far too much of the tax burden on those least able to pay – the poor, and low-to-middle income workers and farmers, and small businesses – while giving most of the breaks to those most able to pay, the big corporations and the extremely wealthy. That is the main reason why our State is underfunded and cannot balance its budget without causing serious harm to the quality of life of the people.
According to a recent study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Illinois is the 6th worst state in the nation in terms of being regressive, that is, in terms of taxing lower and middle-income taxpayers at a higher rate than the wealthy. When all taxes are taken into account – income, sales, excise and property taxes, and the effects of federal offsets, the poorest 20 percent of Illinois taxpayers pay 13.1% of their income in taxes, the middle 60 percent pay, on average, about 10.1% of their income in taxes, while the top 1 percent – people with an average income of $1.3 million per year (or about $23,000 per week) – are only paying 4.6% of their income in taxes. Years of special tax favors to big corporations also means that these wealthy non-persons are also not paying their fair share of taxes, either.
This situation must be reversed. That is why I support House Bill 750 – or something substantially similar – as the way to get us out of the budget mess, while also providing a better basis for funding education in our schools. The product of a genuine people’s advocacy group, the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, [ctbaonline.org], the bill would couple a general increase in the State income tax with tax credits for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, along with a dedicated fund, to provide badly needed property tax abatements of 20-25 percent to local taxpayers. Overall, the plan would raise enough funds to adequately fund our schools, begin solving the pension mess, getting our social service agencies back on track and allowing us to make some real headway through projects that represent genuine progress – like a job-creating “New Deal” to promote sustainable energy production and sustainable transportation in Illinois. [For more details on House Bill 750, see the Center’s website or my position paper on Budget and Education.]
Rod Blagojevich repeatedly brags that he has dealt with the budget deficit “without raising taxes.” The trouble is, he hasn’t solved the problem. His approach has been to cut services, raid dedicated funds, sell off state buildings – and above all, sell bonds, which only postpone the problem, making it harder for future generations to solve. That’s not a solution. That is sacrificing the public good down the road for political power now. It is more of the same irresponsible fiscal policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
What Mr. Blagojevich fails to understand is that the real issue is not whether taxes are “raised” or not. The real issue is whether our tax system is fair or not, and whether we are spending the public money we raise wisely, to serve the public good, not political friends. I want a fair tax system so that we can use government to serve the public good. Mr. Blagojevich defends a thoroughly unfair tax system and uses some of the funds to reward his political friends, while basic social, economic and environmental needs are left unmet.
The problems we face today are the legacy of years of rule by the two corporate parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. In saying this, we are not faulting the good hard-working citizens of this State who have identified with either the Republican or Democratic parties over the years. The fault is with these parties as institutions, and with their top leadership. They have come under the power and influence of the giant multinational corporations who are rapidly bringing this nation, and indeed the world, to ruin. That is why we need a genuine people’s party, the Green Party, a party that refuses all corporate campaign contributions, as a vehicle to fight back. With your help, we can make a good start by wresting the State of Illinois from the likes of Rod Blagojevich.
Rod Blagojevich’s 2006 State of the State Address was an exercise in deception. It didn’t accurately depict the true state of our State. It ignored gaping problems. It contained several “feel good” sounding proposals but failed to identify the flaws and shortcomings contained therein. Above all, it failed to even acknowledge the proverbial “elephant in the living room” – the joint failure of the Blagojevich administration and the Illinois State Legislature to deal with our State’s failed system of taxation and budgeting, which threatens the well-being of future generations of schoolchildren, college students, pensioners and taxpayers in general.
What the speech mainly signifies is that Rod Blagojevich will try to buy an election victory by throwing more government dollars that we can’t afford to spend on a few short-term road projects and school construction projects, while ignoring the impact of his irresponsible budgetary decisions on future generations.
The Whitney for Governor campaign will do everything in its power to persuade voters not to fall for such a ploy. We’re like the ant in the ant-and-the-grasshopper fable. A little hard work now can help us avoid the folly being urged on us by the current governor, who is as careless about the future as the fabled grasshopper.
What is the real State of the State in 2006? Let’s look at a few realities:
! The State still has not solved its budget crisis. As a consequence, state services and programs – from assisted living facilities to correctional facilities, to the Department of Natural Resources, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and environmental programs, to schools and universities, to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and tourism programs, to the Department of Children and Family Services – are all struggling to make do with less money, and simply cannot maintain quality service. The long-term failure to adequately fund the State’s public pension systems means that we will face deeper budget crises in the years ahead, causing even deeper cuts and/or broken promises to future pensioners – unless we enact a major overhaul to our tax system now.
! Unemployment remains at unacceptably high levels, while manufacturing and other high-paying jobs continue to decline. In 2004, 12.2 percent of Illinoisans lived below the national poverty line, as did 17.7 percent of its children. Since 1999, median household income in Illinois dropped by more than 12 percent, the second sharpest decline in the nation and more than triple the rate of decline nationwide.
! Despite Governor Blagojevich’s highly touted initiatives to bring health-care to children, the percentage of Illinoisans lacking any health insurance coverage stood at 14 percent in 2004, up from 10.9 percent in 1990.
! Although Illinois has the fifth-highest Gross State Product in the nation, it ranks 48th in education spending. Sixty percent of its funding comes from property taxes, which has also given Illinois one of the largest gaps between rich school districts and poor school districts in the United States. In 2003-04, the highest spending school district in Illinois spent $19,361 more per pupil than the lowest spending school district, increasing the gap by $4,000 compared to the year before. More and more school districts in Illinois are in deficit spending, and the number of schools facing serious academic performance problems has risen dramatically. Not surprisingly, Illinois also has some of the worst school achievement gaps in the country and the overall performance of its schools has been mediocre at best. Meanwhile, tuition and fees at our colleges and universities continue to climb, making higher education out of the financial reach of more and more students from working families.
In the face of these realities, Rod Blagojevich selectively cited a few “factoids” in an attempt to put a smiley face over a dismal picture. For example, he claims that Illinois has “invested more money in its schools in the last three years than any other state in the Midwest.” But what is he talking about? Capital spending on school construction or spending on education itself? Either way, the fact that Illinois may eclipse other states, that may be even more disgraceful in their failure to support schools, hardly justifies praise. Illinois is still spending over $1,200 less per pupil than the state foundation level recommended by the Education Funding Advisory Board.
Blagojevich claims that Illinois has made progress toward achieving equality for African-Americans and Latinos under his leadership. In fact, the gap between White and African-American and Hispanic wage rates has grown in recent years – while the State’s Department of Human Rights is yet another agency that does not receive the financial support it needs to do an adequate job.
Some of the things that Blagojevich calls “progress” do not warrant that description. He spoke of “a bipartisan effort to reduce medical malpractice costs,” when in fact he signed a bill that did little to address the real causes of soaring malpractice rates, but pandered to the insurance industry by curtailing the rights of victims to an award determined by a jury of their peers.
He actually had the gall to brag about supporting the notorious boondoggle known as the Peotone Airport project.
He called for various road-building projects that were plainly calculated to reward his allies in the State Legislature, not serve the interests of the people. For example, his proposal to “widen Route 13 from Marion to Carterville” is a ludicrous venture that cannot be justified on the basis of relieving traffic congestion or anything else. It does, however, amount to a healthy slice of pork for such Democratic allies as Rep. Brandon Phelps and State Senator Gary Forby.
This is the same kind of “pay for play” politics that has made many State workers and job applicants angry, as they see evidence that some State jobs and benefits are being awarded on the basis of political patronage, not merit. It’s the same kind of pay for play politics that prompts Governor Blagojevich to suddenly promote keno (yet another gambling game that preys largely on lower-income workers) as a means of funding schools, after the gambling “industry” donates over $10,000 to the Blagojevich campaign – and expect voters to believe that this is just a coincidence.
Blagojevich spoke of creating 230,000 jobs through capital “improvement” projects – most of them consisting of road construction jobs, with a far lesser sum being devoted to public transportation and schools. This reflects more of the same distorted priorities that we have come to expect from both Democratic and Republican administrations in Springfield. At a time when global warming threatens to wreak havoc on human society and all life on the planet; at a time when it is obvious that the era of cheap oil is on the way out, Blagojevich continues the trend of favoring the automobile over other forms of transportation. He wants more roads and highways – meaning more urban sprawl, more lost time and lost money spent commuting, more human isolation and alienation – and more environmental destruction. Automobiles account for about one-half of all air pollution emissions in the United States and are the biggest producers of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, emitting about one-quarter of the total. When are politicians like Blagojevich going to get the message that we need a major shift in our transportation priorities now – focusing on more energy-efficient modern high-speed rail and light rail systems, better urban planning to shorten distances between homes and workplaces and promote bike and pedestrian traffic?
This projected creation of 230,000 new (but mostly temporary) jobs, by the way, is to be funded by yet more sales of bonds, increasing the state’s indebtedness – and long-term budget problems – by another $3.2 billion.
But that seems to be the Blagojevich way. Instead of real solutions, he presents gimmicks that will cost the State money without solving the underlying problems. Tuition going up? Let’s give $1,000 to every freshman and sophomore who maintains a B average or better. Will that really make college more affordable to poor, working-class or middle-class students? Not much. Is there a sound plan to pay for it? Probably not. But it does create the appearance that Rod Blagojevich is a friend of higher education.
Is lack of health-care coverage a serious and growing problem in Illinois, as in the rest of the nation? You bet. Let’s come up with something called All Kids to allow all children in the State to have access to health care. Never mind the details on funding, and on how doctors get paid, and whether or not it will work; it sounds good. Now (he says, in the State of the State address) lets follow that with a new plan to cover Veterans. But does this piecemeal approach to providing adequate health coverage get to the core of the problem – the steady erosion of health insurance coverage by private employers? No. What it mainly does is score some political points, while creating new and unnecessary bureaucracies. Instead of a real solution – universal health care, through a comprehensive, single-payer system – we get a patchwork of plans. What’s next? A new plan to provide health coverage to all persons whose name ends in A through C? All Scorpios and Libras? All Siamese twins? All persons who were born on a Tuesday?
To be sure, there are a few points that Blagojevich spoke about that do make sense and that, in general, I would support as well. Raising the minimum wage. Imposing tougher regulations on mercury emissions. But even on these points, Blagojevich’s fine words haven’t always been matched by equivalent deeds. If he is really interested in reducing mercury emissions, why did his administration give the green light to a mine-mouth coal-fired plant – the Peabody Coal plant in Marissa, Illinois – that does not use the best available technology to reduce mercury and other harmful emissions, and that will likely contaminate more of our streams, lakes and ponds in Southern Illinois?
In sharp contrast to Mr. Blagojevich, I offer some real solutions that are based on a realistic appraisal of the State’s problems – beginning with the budget.
Our tax structure in Illinois is fundamentally unfair, placing far too much of the tax burden on those least able to pay – the poor, and low-to-middle income workers and farmers, and small businesses – while giving most of the breaks to those most able to pay, the big corporations and the extremely wealthy. That is the main reason why our State is underfunded and cannot balance its budget without causing serious harm to the quality of life of the people.
According to a recent study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Illinois is the 6th worst state in the nation in terms of being regressive, that is, in terms of taxing lower and middle-income taxpayers at a higher rate than the wealthy. When all taxes are taken into account – income, sales, excise and property taxes, and the effects of federal offsets, the poorest 20 percent of Illinois taxpayers pay 13.1% of their income in taxes, the middle 60 percent pay, on average, about 10.1% of their income in taxes, while the top 1 percent – people with an average income of $1.3 million per year (or about $23,000 per week) – are only paying 4.6% of their income in taxes. Years of special tax favors to big corporations also means that these wealthy non-persons are also not paying their fair share of taxes, either.
This situation must be reversed. That is why I support House Bill 750 – or something substantially similar – as the way to get us out of the budget mess, while also providing a better basis for funding education in our schools. The product of a genuine people’s advocacy group, the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, [ctbaonline.org], the bill would couple a general increase in the State income tax with tax credits for lower- and middle-income taxpayers, along with a dedicated fund, to provide badly needed property tax abatements of 20-25 percent to local taxpayers. Overall, the plan would raise enough funds to adequately fund our schools, begin solving the pension mess, getting our social service agencies back on track and allowing us to make some real headway through projects that represent genuine progress – like a job-creating “New Deal” to promote sustainable energy production and sustainable transportation in Illinois. [For more details on House Bill 750, see the Center’s website or my position paper on Budget and Education.]
Rod Blagojevich repeatedly brags that he has dealt with the budget deficit “without raising taxes.” The trouble is, he hasn’t solved the problem. His approach has been to cut services, raid dedicated funds, sell off state buildings – and above all, sell bonds, which only postpone the problem, making it harder for future generations to solve. That’s not a solution. That is sacrificing the public good down the road for political power now. It is more of the same irresponsible fiscal policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
What Mr. Blagojevich fails to understand is that the real issue is not whether taxes are “raised” or not. The real issue is whether our tax system is fair or not, and whether we are spending the public money we raise wisely, to serve the public good, not political friends. I want a fair tax system so that we can use government to serve the public good. Mr. Blagojevich defends a thoroughly unfair tax system and uses some of the funds to reward his political friends, while basic social, economic and environmental needs are left unmet.
The problems we face today are the legacy of years of rule by the two corporate parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. In saying this, we are not faulting the good hard-working citizens of this State who have identified with either the Republican or Democratic parties over the years. The fault is with these parties as institutions, and with their top leadership. They have come under the power and influence of the giant multinational corporations who are rapidly bringing this nation, and indeed the world, to ruin. That is why we need a genuine people’s party, the Green Party, a party that refuses all corporate campaign contributions, as a vehicle to fight back. With your help, we can make a good start by wresting the State of Illinois from the likes of Rod Blagojevich.
posted by Whitney Campaign Updates at 9:22 AM
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