Illinois to Taxpayers: Drop Dead

Some kind of drastic action was needed to fix Illinois's budget gap. Unfortunately, the legislature made the wrong choice to close the gap with a combination of huge tax increases and big bond issuances. For more than a decade, Illinois has been an unsustainable spending path. If Illinois lawmakers had simply grown all general spending at the same rate of inflation and population growth since 1997, the state would currently enjoy a big surplus.