Another View
The January 16 episode of Chicago Tonight had a segment about Illinois Governor Richard Ogilvie. He was a one-term governor whose Republican administration was faced with many crisis level problems. The most critical was the lack of money in the bank. Government employees couldn’t get a check because the state was literally bankrupt. The state borrowed money to solve the immediate problems but a long term solution would require doing something that was and is an anathema to the Republican Party — an income tax. He went against his party’s philosophy to save the state and its people. Putting the state on a firm financial footing cost him the election. Later governors did what their party ideology demanded so they would have a shot at re-election.

We know many of the founding fathers were concerned what could happen with political parties from their experiences in and with the English parliament. The hope was the dissidence from trying to write the constitution would disappear in a few years. Not only did it not, it became stronger.

The financial difference today between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party seems to be the Democratic Party wants to help the common people and raise taxes. The Republicans want to help the rich and businesses with tax cuts.

Today we have a rapidly growing National debt that was well on its way to being eliminated until President George W. Bush (Dick Cheney) put through a massive tax cut which couldn’t be reversed by Obama because of the Great Recession. When the economy turned around, Obama had a Republican Congress. The debt continues to increase. Then President Donald Trump came along and cut taxes again. Now the debt meters are turning at an unreadable speed. With the rest of the world running up debt, too, our situation could become unmanageable. A tax increase is a necessity!

Illinois has a new Democratic Governor who has a philanthropic history of helping people with his vast wealth. The previous governor had great wealth but thought a state was like running a business. The state was not in good financial shape when he came in and he left it in a much worse shape because he didn’t want to renew the expired tax.

The question for Illinois is if Governor Pritzker can get the state’s financial condition on a sustainable path. During his first term, he must devote his administration’s effort to paying off the hundreds of millions in unpaid bills, reversing the growing pension debt, and spending some funds on critical infrastructure repairs. The latter must be really critical repairs with nothing going to political back scratching projects. Debt first, everything else second.

Pritzker must be like Ogilvie and solve Illinois’ financial problems first and not pass the problems on to the next governor.