State government: A Tale of Two States

Watching how differently Illinois and Wisconsin are dealing with their respective deficit crises makes me wish someone would write a Charles Dickens type novel, and call it “A Tale of Two States.”

Illinois, in the hands of Democrats, as always, views state employees as a huge bloc of voters who they need to placate more than they need to please the taxpayers. That fact dictates the methods they must employ as they attempt to solve Illinois’ financial crisis.

So, they raise the state income tax, borrow $8.5 billion and try to spend their way out of debt. The Illinois governor and Democrat legislative leadership lack the political courage to address the actual problem, which is an overly generous employee state pension plan that without modification is still going to bankrupt the state.

Wisconsin, on the other hand, with a newly elected Republican majority and governor, are showing their electorate that they recognize the state’s past governance did not exercise its fiduciary responsibility very well when signing union contracts.

But unlike Illinois, these people are demonstrating to their electorate that they do have the courage to make a course correction to restore the state’s financial stability. At the same time, in an astonishing act of cowardice, the Democrat legislative minority that created the problem ran away to hide.

President Obama, who recently presented his budget for economic catastrophe, has weighed in on the side of the Wisconsin public employees. He says that we should support the public employees because “after all, these people are our neighbors and friends, and we should not want to harm them.”

Mr. President, are selfish, spoiled people, who expect their neighbors to be taxed out of existence so they can continue to enjoy excessively generous benefits, really be our friends? The president thinks Americans are too selfish and stupid to recognize how serious and potentially damaging the deficits have become and they will turn against these brave Republicans at the first sign of any rollback. I pray he will be proven wrong, and that we have finally arrived at a point when the people will stand behind those leaders with enough courage to throw the switch to avoid a devastating financial train wreck that would put an end to the American dream.

Vincent A. Froberg

Elgin