State needs to make cuts like businesses

State legislature needs to freeze wages of all state employees immediately.

This should be the first action for the legislature to take because of the magnitude of the budget shortfall. This should apply to everyone including teachers, police, firemen, bus drivers, - everyone in government. Most companies in private industry have already done this.

This freeze should also include step increases as well since they are normally included in private industry freezes as well.

The next action item should be to reduce all budgets by whatever percentage is required to balance the budget. Most of the budgets are probably way out of control by private industry standards anyway.

Taxes should not be increased at all. There are so many people out of work and there are so many retirees on fixed incomes it would cause considerable and unfair hardships on the people who can least afford them.

The next item that the legislature needs to address is the outrageously out of control pension and pension benefit debt. This has been reported to be $90 billion and climbing about 5 percent per year.

This will require a state constitutional convention. Since this will take a lot of time it should be initiated right away. This has been ignored for many years because of large campaign contributions from employee unions causing legislators to ignore this to keep the money flowing. Perhaps former Governor Jim Edgar should be asked if he could assist in this effort.

Robert Kellstrom

Schaumburg