Primarily I’m looking at you Mike Madigan. What good is a majority if you cannot use it for anything worthwhile like ensuring the fiscal well being of the state and ensuring reasonable services for the citizens of Illinois?
Even in the sheltered House this sort of refusal to take on a financial disaster is appalling. Someone, preferably a very powerful Speaker, needs to sit down with House Dems and tell them straight out that either they pass a tax increase or the consequences are going to be far worse than passing a tax increase.
The state is broke and there is no way out of this that doesn’t involve a tax increase–a significant tax increase. That is going to take Members taking a risk and no amount of shielding by the Speaker is going to change that. Blagojevich was a convenient excuse–and a legitimate one when it came to not dealing with the long terms problems of the Illinois budget. Thankfully he’s gone, but there is no more time to put off a long term solution that involves significant tax increases, though it can be combined with tax reform–especially property taxes.
But what is Andy McKenna worried about? Whether Madigan is using Twitter. Can anyone play this game?