Illinois Failures Go Nationwide Under Obama

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

'Unsustainable" is a scary word that recently entered political discourse, coming authoritatively from Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf. Unsustainability is the operative moniker for Barack Obama's massive deficit spending, which Elmendorf said "cannot be solved through minor tinkering."

The CBO predicts an increase in our public debt from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion at the end of 2020 if Obama's fiscal 2011 budget is implemented. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the debt will rise to 90% from 53%.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., sharpened the focus by asking the CBO director: "What's going to be necessary (is) either a 25% increase in taxes or a 20% reduction in spending, or some combination thereof. Is that correct?" Elmendorf replied "yes."

Americans are beginning to wonder if Greece is the picture of the U.S.' future. But we need look no further than the place where Obama and his team were trained in community organizing and bully tactics to redistribute the wealth: Illinois.

Illinois was the stomping ground for years for Obama, his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and his appointees such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. After they promoted themselves to Washington to run the country, other Obama associates who didn't make the cut continued to run Illinois into the ground, as the Illinois unemployment rate jumped from less than 5% to nearly 11%.

For years, we thought California was the most fiscally irresponsible of all 50 states, but Illinois has now taken the lead. A lengthy news article in the New York Times was headlined: "Illinois Stops Paying Its Bills, but Can't Stop Digging Hole."

Under years of Democratic leadership, Illinois has refused to honor its obligations, cut spending or trim its shockingly large deficit, which at $12 billion per year approaches nearly half its budget. As a result, Illinois' credit rating has been downgraded and it pays a massive amount in interest on its loans.

That's like a family making $50,000 but spending $75,000 each year. Obviously, it won't take long before such a family would lose everything it has.

The big-majority Democratic state legislature, defying Illinois' balanced-budget law, has been passing deficit budgets for years. The new definition of a liberal is no longer tax-and-spend; it's borrow-and-spend.

It's no surprise that unemployment keeps increasing, and the reason why the rate isn't higher than we are told is that the government has stopped counting people who have given up looking for a job. Employers are not hiring because taxes and regulations are expected to rise.