The Oak Park senator in 2013 promotes taxes as fiscal solution, but fudges on what to call them

2nd installment, Short History of Oak Park, Vol. 2, The Donald and the Clothes Horse etc. . . . 

We left the Senator at the Carleton Hotel, June of 2013, assuring Oak Park's Business and Civic Council and other concerned citizens that the fiscal crisis in Springfield was being overblown by over-zealous Republicans.

The senator continued in a vein of all-conquering optimism with praise for the January 2011 temporary income-tax rate increase -- from 3% to 5%, which he helpfully explained was a 2% raise, though "Republicans [the rascals!] say 67%."

He also helpfully ignored well known Republican outlets such as Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, and Huffington Post, each of whom called it a 66% raise, the latter unconscionably adding that it was a "massive increase." Conspiratorially.

So what? The senator had something else in mind, a "fair tax" -- higher rates for higher earners -- that would satisfy budgetary and vote-getting needs simultaneously. He was being clever about it, rebranding the graduated or "progressive," tax, with its venerated soak-the-rich flavor.

Next day, in the (Springfield) State-Journal Register, he struck the still-hot iron with a thumb-in-eye comment declaring himself "not surprised" at Republican opposition to his proposal, introduced a day earlier, on the last day of the session.

After all, he said, Republicans are beholden to "the more well-off," for whose interests they would be expected to "step up," so as to "perpetuate an unfair tax." By Jove, a talking point!

And a hijacking in broad daylight, as it happened, of a term in use at least since 1999, when Congressional Republicans proposed a national sales tax to replace the IRS. File your returns on a postcard, the proposers predicted.

The term was familiar also to people who paid attention to presidential-campaign discussion in 2008, when it was discussed, and remained in 2013 the goal of Americans For Fair Taxation.

The senator's fair tax was nothing like that, of course, but imposed according to income (same-old, same-old), not spending. It was "progressive," its rate rising with taxpayer's income. Punishing success, say opponents, spreading the wealth ("You didn't build that,"), say Democrats, who normally rejoice in the word.

Not this time. Indeed, the senator showed trail-blazing mettle in scoring not only budgetarily and politically with his "fair" tax but also lexicographically, deftly changing the word's accepted meaning -- a sort of Humpty-Dumpty maneuver -- "When I use a word, . . . it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." The senator did it for marketing reasons, he was to acknowledge in a later forum.

His 2% did not pass muster for one listener, as he explained in a letter to the Oak Leaves, the longer-standing of two surviving Oak Park weeklies.

"In a finance-centric discussion replete with bar graphs, pie charts and other data points," the man wrote, "[the senator] repeatedly referred to the income tax hike as a two-percent increase. At the same time, he dismissed those (including our Republican friends) who referred to it as a 67-percent increase.

The senator, however, "either . . . has a tiny hole in his grasp of math or . . . is reluctant to acknowledge the difference between percent change and percentage point change.

"Starting at 3 percent and then going to 5 percent is a 2-percentage-point increase. But it's a 66.7-percent change."

Right. The senator from Oak Park, a home-grown product in his 12th year as senator, still had something to learn about the village's people, in this case whether he could get past them with word games.

-- To be continued --

Short History of Oak Park, Vol. 2, The Donald and the Clothes Horse: Senatorial splendor, House Decoration -- the Town Hall Trail, June to October, 2013

The Donald of Oak Park, its senator in Springfield, where he's high in the ranks of the Ruling Party and is smooth-as-silk boss of Oak Park's Democratic Party organization, took to the podium at Oak Park's Carleton Hotel on a glorious day in late June of 2013 for his annual report to the Business and Civic Council. 

It was time to explain things to bankers, business owners and operators, and other issues-aware citizen consumers and taxpayers with skin in the game to varying degrees and/or psychic income from allegedly progressive political victories and enactments.

The state was in a state of turmoil, confusion, and all-around hyperactivity. The two legislative chambers were at odds over a pension solution. The governor, a one-time gadfly with Oak Park roots, was soon to cut off legislators' pay checks to punish them for inactivity.

For the Donald, however, it was what-me-worry time. "The sky isn't falling," he intoned, no matter what Republicans said. Falling or not, government had been "cut to the bone" to keep it from doing so. 

Pension payments, where his votes are, not fiscal problems that threaten far more than pensions, were the issue. Illinois "has never missed a pension and never will," he said. Saving the state, fending off mediocrity for all and sundry except the very well-to-do? Not the issue.

The long haul had no appeal. In the long run, we'll all be dead, he might have said, echoing Lord K., the apostle of deficit spending. Focus on the immediate particular, in this case the budget, his comfort zone. One just passed paid the pension for the coming year. He was comfortable with what he and his fellows might achieve in the immediate future. Leadership here, vision too. Yay.

Legislators "kind of solved the pension problem with the 2010 reform" anyhow, he said with a small grin. Yes, the 2010 reform. It tightened benefits for new hires and left the pension only partly funded. ("'Tain't funny, McGee," Fibber's wife Molly used to say on the radio.)

Don't blame Democrats who run the show but couldn't agree on how to fix pensions. It was a matter of "honest, principled differences." Oh those honest, principled Democrats. When will we see such another? Their differences were enough to bring things to a halt, but not to worry, sky not falling.

-- to be continued -- 

Rauner's the one, says Sun-Times

Having vowed to "shake [the state] up," he is showing "what a shake-up looks like," demanding "basic pro-business reforms before he will even talk about raising taxes. . . . Nobody should doubt he will continue to chop away if he and the Legislature’s Democratic leadership cannot find common ground."

He will be "the bad guy" if necessary. "He clearly won’t settle for yet another politically expedient short-term fix."

"He's not kidding." Not so the Democrats, says S-T, "especially House Speaker Michael Madigan." Smart money will not go on him. "It doesn't make sense," when the bettor considers his 30 years at the helm (as House Speaker), of the last 32.

Problem? Unemployment 6 percent, vs. 5.4 percent nationally, "far higher" that the Midwest average. Population growth "stagnant." The business climate "consistently ranked among the worst in the nation," bond rating worst. The state’s awash in red ink — pension obligations "threaten to gut the entire government."

Time for a change. Rauner is "all about change, which is why he was elected." Madigan is "all about no change," offering " a yet "deeper hole."

Rauner’s cuts "a scare tactic," say Dems. "But it looks to us like a real plan." Again, he's not kidding, holds out possibility of cutting "much more."

“Middle-Class Agenda,” Dems have responded, (typically) "long on crowd-pleasing gift-giving": new tuition tax credit, higher minimum wage, free community college, and "guaranteed paid sick leave for all workers in the private sector, even those who work only part time"! (Santa Claus, we hardly knew you!)

Lovely, but how pay for it? (Classic Dem response to this question was by Congressman Danny Davis at Malcolm X College in August of 2009, as ObamaCare was being debated, "No matter the cost, quality health care should be provided for every citizen.")

S-T: "Except for a call to close 'corporate loopholes,' nothing in the Democrats’ plan even hints at the sad truth that our state is broke." Downplay the problem, Downplay the problem -- like Sen. Don Harmon in a series of town hall sessions in the summer of 2013.

Which leads S-T to ask who is the real champion of the middle class" -- the legislature that can't say no or "a governor . . . who understands that Illinois is in desperate need of more fundamental reform?"