State Sovereignty National Union is the state motto of Illinois. Didn’t know that did you. Neither did I. The statistics in this post come from OpenTheBooks.com and their article in RealClear Politics.
Maybe Illinois knew what Pelosi had planned. Illinois is the home of Rod Blagojevich, George Ryan, Dan Walker, and Otto Kerner. Four of Illinois’ last seven governors are prison inmates. It is the home of Jussie Smollett. Perhaps nowhere in the country has the government failed worse than in Illinois.
Illinois may be the Land of Lincoln. Maybe it is a place where a young store clerk demonstrated honesty. He was a future president. For six cents, Lincoln once made a three-mile walk to return the change. The change was due to a woman he’d inadvertently overcharged.
Today Illinois has about 110,000 public employees who are receiving salaries or pensions in excess of $100,000. Under the Democrats’ plan, Illinois will receive $20 billion in bailout money. Illinois is responsible for launching the political career of “Honest Abe.” Today, in our time, Illinois is a cesspool of corruption.
It has made a bargain whereby Illinois is trading something of supreme moral or spiritual importance. It has bartered away the personal values or the soul of all the taxpayers. In exchange, they receive some otherworldly benefit. Gone are the state’s commonsense, knowledge, power, and riches.
Who’s getting the money?
Where did the riches go? Well, to the public employee unions. This financially strapped state is flirting with junk bond status. They are praying for the Pelosi Bailout from the Heroes Act. They want to shift their debt to you through the federal government.
Right there, in the American heartland let me make you a shortlist of plum jobs:
- Chicago’s city-employed tree trimmers make $106,663.
- A state correctional facility nurses take home up to $277,100.
- Higher education is a particularly lucrative public service endeavor.
- Illinois community college presidents get nearly half-a-million dollars a year.
- University doctors are compensated at packages ranging up to $2 million annually.
- At the state’s signature public university, the head football coach is paid $4 million… for fielding a losing team.
Thanks to such largess, every man, woman, and child in Illinois owes $19,000. The state owes an estimated $251 billion pension liability. An Illinois family of four now owes more in pension liabilities ($76,000) that have no funding source than they earn in household income ($63,585).
Is that a problem? Yet they keep electing leadership that does nothing to turn the ship around. Illinois is banking on State Sovereignty National Union, translated as Pelosi’s HEROES Act, to keep their chestnuts out of the financial fire.