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.
Which is why I skipped the last election. Record high overall taxes and no discussion of reducing spending. Voting Republican means slow doom. Voting Democratic means fast doom. Let’s just get it over with.