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Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Yeah, that’s going to make me change my vote. Not!
Let’s ask those who are not entitled to those benefits to pay for someone else’s retirement and healthcare. Let’s take a look at what the average Illinoisian has in assets and retirement savings and ask them if they would like to pay for someone else’s retirement. Good luck pointing that out as school quality and public services continue to erode. This is the next chapter in the inequality debate.
Quit spending more that what you have Welch!
Figure it out its not difficult.
Enough of this talk of “fixes” that won’t fix anything! Fix the damn system of inappropriately high salaries for work performed and skills required, ridiculously high pensions, and free retiree health care. As much as I think wirepoints is providing a needed service, imagine how many less articles they’d need to write if these things were implemented.
OK, we get it. If there’s a stupid idea that didn’t get implemented, you’re supposed to try and try again to get it implemented. That’s classic IL pol thinking. Ugh, here we go again. Will someone please sit this guy down and explain to him that a graduated income tax system won’t solve anything? They keep ignoring the fact that this will accelerate the outward migration, including having some of the highest earners leaving, thereby increasing IL’s notoriety as “The Incredible Shrinking State.” (I just made up that nickname. Do you like it?) “… that’s an important structural change that… Read more »
Is it a prerequisite for an IL politician to have such a poor command of finances and economics? Also, who the heck believes that a graduated income tax system will solve the pension problem?
One thing we all should have learned for the past 30 years, always, always trust an Illinois politician with your tax hike monies. Their lies and deception would only fly in the State of Illinois. Glad to see newly elect Welch (Madigan Puppet) a Chicago Democrat has some fresh ideas in his new Speaker position. Recovery is right around the corner Illinois!
Contrary to some of the comments here, Illinois has made its full statutory pension contributions to the state retirement systems, without borrowing, since the flat income tax rate was increased to 5%. So for good or ill, that is where most, if not all, of the extra money generated by the tax increase went.
And a reminder that “full statutory contribution” means nothing because that’s just what legislators made up. It is not sufficient even for “tread water” status, even assuming the phony assumptions used in pension accounting hold up. The unfunded liability therefore grows and grows.
Lol
Andrew – your comment is so far from economic reality than it is hard to believe someone would come to this site and make it. Don’t you have a rebuttal?
Welch must just be plain stupid!!!
I appreciate Speaker Welch being so stupid as to show us his hand in the middle of a poker game. Glad to know he plans to tell people across Illinois that he doesn’t accept their recent vote.
There may be only seven states with a flat income tax, but there are nine states with NO income tax. Where would you rather be?
Could the stars have been more aligned for passage than in 2020? Bad Orange Man brought out more D voters than ever before. Add a deep blue governor in a deep blue state with an unlimited budget to sell us on their plan. And it still failed.
And now they think tying the Fair Tax to *old* spending is going to generate enough support?!
There’s only one reason why they would ask to have for a do-over on a referendum that just failed so miserably:
Because they plan on rigging the vote totals to ensure it passes. We’ve seen this before.
There is no other logical explanation.
What a Fool Believes.. Great idea because “tying revenue to a need” has worked so well in the past. We were only going to pay tolls on the toll road until they were paid off. Didn’t happen. The lottery was going to fund schools. Didn’t happen as they spent lottery revenue on other pork items. The temporary income tax hike we had a few years ago was supposed to pay down pension debt and unpaid state bills. Didn’t happen as the revenue was spent on everything but the intended purpose. We all need to take the position that everything that… Read more »
Will they recycle their failed ads? Will they tell us that 97% of Illinoisans will get a tax cut to fund pensions?
I don’t know if they will try to recycle those ads but I am 100% certain that they will recycle the lies they told as well as coming up with a lot of new whoppers.
Welch is going to be a royal pain in the a**. He’ll always be focused on “revenue generation,” completely oblivious to economics 101, that says a public sector dollar is a dollar out of the private sector.
Every dollar that Illinois state government wastes is one that will not be reinvested here to grow more dollars.
Illinois legislators are nauseating.
Clueless is correct. Most people are struggling to fund their own retirements let alone someone else’s. Once the retirees figure out what the politicians have done they should revolt. Or the next generation will figure out what is in the brown paper bag that is burning on their porch…it won’t end well for anyone…
This guy doesn’t have a clue. He is right though, they should tie a tax increase but not to what he suggested. They should tie it to pension spending reform!!