If you want to know what “progressive” policies will do to America in the long run, look no farther than the president’s home state. According to the MSM narrative, the economic disaster in Illinois is Rod Blagojevich’s fault. That’s true to some extent, but there’s much more to the story than the incompetence of one man. Despite the recession, there is no good reason that Illinois should be bleeding jobs and that its state budget should be on life support.
The Prairie State – my state – sits atop the transportation crossroads of America, has a rich, diversified economic base and a multi-talented workforce. Less than a decade ago, the state had money in the bank, unemployment was low and the outlook was bright. Illinois even managed to shrug off the mini-recession that followed 9-11 with barely a pause. Then, in 2003, Democrats took over complete control of state government, brimming with progressive policies that – cross their hearts and hope to die – wouldn’t hurt the state’s budget or damage its economy one little bit. Happy days, the bedazzled citizens of Illinois were told, were here again.
Seven years later, the Illinois’ economy is lies in smoldering ruins thanks to the progressive policies foisted upon its citizens by a cabal of Democrats that included then-state senator Barack H. Obama. Illinois ranks forty eighth in the nation in job loss, with over 200,000 jobs lost in 2009 alone and unemployment over eleven per cent. Our leading exports used to be corn and soybeans. Today, our number one export is college graduates, because young adults can’t find jobs in the state that gave them their education. In 2000, Illinois debt basically matched revenues. Now, the state’s total debt totals over $100 billion, almost four times annual revenue.
It hasn’t been a question of revenue. State revenue has grown by almost fifty percent over the course of the last decade. Out of control, crippling spending did Illinois in. While it’s amazing that the economy of this once proud state could spiral out of control so quickly, the truly remarkable thing is how it happened. There’s an object lesson here, for Illinois’ road to near-bankruptcy is eerily, and disturbingly, similar to the path that Congress and the Obama administration is leading the nation down today.
To read the Chicago newspapers, you’d thilnk all of this was disgraced former Gov. Blagojevich’s fault, and that by getting rid of him, happy days will soon be here again. It’s a lie.
The real villain in the tragic tale of Illinois economic disaster is not Blago. h. Blago was no evil mastermind. He was, rather, a useful idiot. It’s 2010 and the man doesn’t even know how to use e-mail yet. He’s hardly the sort of guy to engineer the destruction of an entire state’s finances. Corrupt (allegedly)? Big deal. You have to look long and hard to find an Illinois Democrat who isn’t either corrupt or who turns a blind eye to corruption.
It was rather a powerful, progressive legislature dominated by Democrats who put Illinois in this shape, led by ex state Senate president Emil Jones, current state Senate president John Cullerton and, most importantly of all, the Speaker of the Illinois House: Mike Madigan. Madigan has been Speaker of the House in Illinois since 1983, except for a two year period in the nineties when Republicans briefly controlled the chamber. He’s a Chicago politician, born and bred, and he plays power politics about as well as anyone has in the disreputable history of this state. Nothing happens in Illinois General Assembly without Madigan’s approval. Indeed, nothing can happen in the Illinois General Assembly without his approval.
For example, the Illinois House can’t vote on a bill before it passes through the Rules Committee. Rules committees are commonly described as “legislative traffic cops,” charged with determining what bills may or may not be heard by members. In theory, that determination is supposed to ensure that each bill gets a fair hearing. In practice, Madigan uses the Rules Committee in Illinois to kill those bills that he believes would harm his party’s prospects.
The constitution of the state of Illinois also has a provision that requires – not suggests, but requires – the General Assembly to pass a balanced budget each year. Madigan’s House has not only ignored this part of the state’s constitution, the Speaker has admitted it.
Finally, there is this: in most every state in the union bills are called according to a pre-planned order. That is, elected officials are furnished with an orderly schedule that tells them when each bill will come up for a vote, thus affording them the opportunity to ensure that they are present to debate the measure. That’s not the way it’s done in the Illinois House. Mike Madigan decides when bills are voted on and he keeps that information close to his vest. It’s a game of legislative “gotcha” and nobody does it better than Madigan.
A few years ago, when the damage that had been done to Illinois’ economy became blindingly obvious and voters finally soured on Blago, Madigan rebranded himself as a “fiscal conservative,” dedicated to battling the excessive spending that the governor had somehow imposed on the people of Illinois. It was as if Madigan had nothing to do with creating the entitlement programs that sabotaged the state in the first place. The mainstream media happily buttressed the Speaker’s position. The Speaker was trying to rein in our out-of-control governor they said, although it was Madigan who had spent years enabling Blago in the first place.
Might we draw some parallels with another chief executive who also hails from Illinois? President Obama said that reforming health care was a matter of deep personal interest, but then allowed Congress to draw up a bill that no one, and certainly not him, understands. Obama said that he would create jobs and reduce the deficit, but has signed scores of bills that have had exactly the opposite effect.
Conservatives frequently hang the tag “socialist” on the president. The fact that he learned his political trade in Illinois suggests something else. Given his inability to speak coherently about practically any subject without the benefit of a script, it seems more likely that rather than being a mastermind, Barack Obama is – like Rod Blagojevich – just another useful idiot in a position of power.
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