Father Quinn lays down the law as Illinois family copes

I don't like paying taxes in the same way I don't like telling my sons that they can't chug Mountain Dew and wolf down Oreos while they stay up until midnight playing video games.

My life would by easier, and my kids and I all would be happier in the short term, if I never had to make any of those tough decisions for the long term.

But I gladly make my sons drink milk and eat their veggies and make them go to bed on time because that is what fathers should do to ensure a better future for our families. And I gladly pay my taxes to my suburb, schools, county and state, because that is what residents should do to ensure a better future.

Gov. Pat Quinn's life would be easier, too, if he could just let us gorge on tax breaks, pensions and government services instead of dishing out the difficult-to-swallow truth.

But Quinn stood before the Illinois Legislature on Wednesday afternoon, sounding very much like a dad who was putting his foot down.

He scolded those politicians who have wasted money, or at least been spending more of it every year on programs that we didn't have enough tax dollars to afford. Then he moved on to what we're going to do about it.

People don't want a tax hike anymore than kids want another helping of green beans. But a tax hike might prove good for us. People don't want to cut state programs anymore than kids want early bedtimes either, but we have to.

"To save our state, we have to make tough choices," Quinn said, noting we have an $11.5 billion deficit.

The complaints about program cuts and tax increases started even before Quinn's speech. Disgraced Rod Blagojevich brags about how he didn't raise the taxes we needed to fund his programs. But we need to realize that our Illinois family is better off than some.

When it comes to our state and local tax "burden," Illinois residents haven't been paying nearly as much as some states.

"You're doing a little better than average," says Josh Barrow, a staff economist with the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group that started during the Great Depression with the goal of thinking taxes should be simple, stable, transparent, neutral and pro-growth.

Our state ranks 30th among the 50 states in the amount of local and state taxes we pay. Illinoisans pay less in state and local taxes than most Americans. While it may seem that more and more of our income goes to taxes each year, we actually are paying the same percentage in taxes that we paid in 1981 and less than we paid throughout most of the 1990s.

Our current state income tax of 3 percent qualifies Illinois as 10th-lowest rate when it comes to individual income tax burden, "and the nine states above you don't have any tax," Barrow says.

If legislators approve Quinn's request to raise that to 4.5 percent, we'll still be in the middle of the pack, Barrow says.

When it comes to business, Illinois is rated as the 23rd-friendliest state for businesses now, Barrow says. With Quinn's corporate tax hike, Illinois would drop to 31st.

You can suggest we should be the state with the lowest tax burden on residents and the best environment for business, but you must acknowledge that we certainly aren't the worst in either of those categories.

As home-owning suburbanites know very well, the state income tax is a drop in the bucket compared to property taxes. When it comes to the highest burden of property taxes, Illinois ranks 10th of the 50 states. Suburbanites also will carry the heavy load for the Quinn plan that gives higher income taxes to any family of four making nearly $61,000 a year.

"Nearly every state has a budget deficit this year," Barrow says. "Most states are getting through this without broad-based tax increases."

Illinois doesn't have that luxury. Quinn already is defending his role as a tax-and-cut Democrat. Even if he's right, it's a tough sell.

Unlike we suburban dads, he doesn't have the luxury of dismissing all those who question his strategy by saying, "Because I said so."