Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 26, 2026
10 Comments
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
The Illinois Policy Institute essay fails to point out that with the adoption of a 401k type plan, the already brittle Illinois pension plans will be further weakened as the contributions from active workers are no longer added to the pension plan and are instead deposited to the workers’ dedicated defined contribution account. This plan is half-baked until it is accompanied by actuarial analysis.
Firing all the Illinois state workers and rehiring them into a 401k type plan will not work because the plans’ accumulated deficits alone make them unaffordable and unsustainable. The 401k might well reduce the cost future state contributions and the risk of market volatility, but the current underfunding is too great to overcome. The unions also bear responsibility this mess. The state government made the pension promises but behind the shield of the 1970 Constitutional ammendment, the unions agreed to these promises that had only a remote chance of being fulfilled. Absent the benefit guarantees, would the unions and their… Read more »
you are right on all points.