Nancy Pelosi thinks Illinois is a “model to the nation,” despite the state’s chronic budget problems, sky-high taxes and crime, and massive unfunded pension liabilities.
Pelosi attended Democrats’ Governor’s Day celebration at the Illinois State Fair Wednesday to heap praise on Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other Democrats running for Congress in 2020.
“You think big. You get big things done,” Pelosi gushed to Pritzker. “Congratulations for being a model to the nation.”
Pelosi applauded Democrat successes in winning all statewide offices in Illinois last year, as well as flipping two Republican congressional seats to give the party a 13-5 advantage in the state’s delegation, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Pelosi called Illinois Democrats the “source of hope in 2020,” though she did indirectly acknowledge the corruption that’s plagued the party in the Land of Lincoln, from former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence to the recent embezzlement charges against state Sen. Tom Cullerton, a Democrat from Villa Park.
“Take pride in this Democratic Party … despite some of its failings,” she said. “Over time, it has been the source of more new ideas, more challenges to conscious with greatness for our country, than any organization you can name.”
“Persistent bold experimentation, that is the vitality of the Democratic Party,” Pelosi preached.
She came to Illinois, she said, “to catch the spark of Illinois, to catch the spark of the heartland of America, where our victory in 2020 will spring from, will spring from.”
The 79-year-old career politician from San Francisco said she’s convinced Democrats running to take on Trump in 2020 – all two-dozen of them – have a progressive agenda Americans want, and she expects voters will respond by putting the party in control of the White House and Senate.
“A mainstream agenda can also be a progressive agenda,” Pelosi said. “It’s been proven in Illinois. Let’s make that happen for the rest of the country.”
Decades of Democratic dominance in state politics, particularly Chicago, offers a look at what voters can expect from Pelosi’s “model to the nation.”
State fiscal rankings compiled by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University lists Illinois as dead last in the country for fiscal solvency in 2018, in large part because of the state’s massive unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities.
The Foundation for Economic Education reported in March that Illinois’ public pension liabilities are second to only to New Jersey and total more than $10,000 for every state resident. Those liabilities amount to more than $200 billion in broken promises Democrats have made to teachers, fire fighters, policemen and scores of other public employees who rely on the state for healthcare and retirement.
And while Democrats have paid in less than 40 percent of what’s needed to fulfill their promises, the state’s pension debt to revenue ratio – a critical measure of financial health – has skyrocketed to 601 percent, which means the state could spend all of its revenue on the debt for six years and it still wouldn’t be paid off.
The national average is 107 percent, while banks typically refuse to lend to anyone with a debt-to-income ratio of more than 43 percent, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.
“Illinois’ inability to manage its pension system in a sustainable and affordable way is one of the main reasons both Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings put the Prairie State’s bond rating just one notch above ‘junk’ status,” according to the nonprofit. “The state’s credit rating has been downgraded 21 times since 2009, primarily due to runaway pension debt.”
And the money problems have plagued the state for over a decade, despite some of the highest taxes in the nation.
A report by WalletHub last spring ranked Illinois as the highest taxed state in the nation, based on the effective total state and local tax rates on a median U.S. household. In Illinois, the average U.S. household with an income of $58,082 spends 14.9% or more than $8,600 on state and local taxes.
Illinois also ranks in the middle among states for education, crime, infrastructure, and healthcare, according to U.S. News and World Report.
For many of the “kitchen table” issues Pelosi claims Democrats are laser focused on for 2020, like fiscal stability, the environment, and the economy, Illinois clearly lags behind most states with less progressive policies, the data shows.
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