Illinois General Assembly: A Fish Rots From the Head Down

By on February 16, 2016   /   Illinois, Latest, Pension Reform  

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CHICAGO—Taxpayers United of America (TUA) today released the results of their updated analysis of Illinois’ General Assembly Retirement System (GARS).

“For more than four decades, Madigan and his ilk have enshrined the theft of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars in an unsustainable government pension system at the expense of everyone else in Illinois. This is not a retirement system or a safety net for civil servants. This is theft, protected by government edicts and perpetuated by the immoral and unethical tax thieves that shuffle through the revolving doors in Springfield,” said Jim Tobin, founder and President of TUA.

“If Boss Madigan cared one bit about his constituents, we would have had pension reform decades ago, not to mention a current state budget, and then perhaps we wouldn’t have a pension crisis at all.”

“Let’s be clear about what this pension cabal is and what it is not. Six-figure government retiree pensions are not ‘for the children.’ This system isn’t about the ‘poor civil servants,’ and it certainly isn’t about fairness. The government pension Ponzi scheme is about the reelection of powerful legislators, the expansion of their voter base, and the money that pours in from donations,” said Tobin. “Just a quick look at some statistics from the GARS pension data analysis will shock Illinois residents and taxpayers.”

“For 2019 and 2020, two GARS pensions exceed $200,000. From 2019 to 2020, the number of pensions exceeding $100,000 has gone from 62 to 71, and the number exceeding $50,000 has gone from 218 to 221. The highest annual pension, $265,428, goes to retired legislator Arthur L. Berman (D), the author of the failed Berman Tax Increase Amendment, which we helped defeat years ago. Berman’s total pension paid to date is $3,670,815.”

“A central figure responsible for much of the pension crisis is former governor James R. Thompson (R), one of the worst tax-raisers in Illinois history. Thompson currently receives an annual pension of $165,987. He has received a total pension to date of $3,219,842. His estimated lifetime pension payout is $3,385,829.”

“Former governor, Patrick J. Quinn Jr. (D), the so-called “reform” governor, currently receives an annual pension of $149,882. He has received a total pension to date of $694,733. His estimated lifetime pension payout is $3,255,658.”

“Former legislator and governor, James R. Edgar (R), receives a current annual pension of $175,952. He has received a total pension to date of $2,502,093, and his estimated lifetime pension payout is $4,755,649.”

“Edgar signed into law Senate Bill 3 in 1998, the biggest government pension increase in the history of Illinois. SB3 gave retired government teachers 75% of their salary at retirement, with annual compounded increases of 3 percent. SB3 will cost taxpayers $4.5 billion in 2020, which is 12% of the Illinois state budget!”

“John Kass of the Chicago Tribune often refers to Illinois’ Speaker of the House as the Khan of Madiganistan, and for good reason. Madigan conducts himself like a warlord and has done so for decades. If he had an ethical bone in his body, he never would have supported the Constitutional Amendment that launched the era of runaway government pensions and began the state’s financial downward spiral. Even after that woeful Constitutional Convention in 1970, the Khan of Madiganistan has had countless opportunities while in his leadership role as Speaker of the house and as a legislator for the past 45 years to limit the perks given to state retirees, much less reform the system that is driving taxpayers from the state like refugees seeking a fresh start.”

“It is criminal that our legislature, under Madigan’s leadership, allows this to continue,” said Tobin. “Part-time legislator pensions shouldn’t be as lavish as our data shows, but unfortunately for taxpayers, this is the financial trouble we are facing.”

Click here to see the top 200 list of GARS pensioners

“It is plain to see the conflict of interest in having legislators, who are supposed to vote on our behalf, benefit from the very system that enriches them and impoverishes the rest of Illinois. There are a handful of legislators in the current General Assembly with some moral fiber who have declined to participate in the pension system, and we applaud their integrity, but that short list does not include Boss Madigan, the Khan of Madiganistan.”

“Are you listening, Speaker Madigan? Where is the government pension reform? Where do your loyalties lie?” Tobin challenged, “Before the Illinois General Assembly considers even discussing a new income tax on retirement benefits or raising the state income tax, the state’s political elite better be aware that residents won’t stand for it, and Taxpayers United of America will lead the charge against the continued pillaging of taxpayers.”

*Lifetime estimated pension payout includes 3% compounded COLA and assumes life expectancy of 85 (IRS Form 590).Save

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No Hope, Nor Change: The Failure of Barack Obama

By on February 10, 2016   /   Illinois, Items of Interest, Latest, News Releases, Taxpayer Alert  

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CHICAGO—President Barack Obama will address the Illinois General Assembly Wednesday afternoon, not far from the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, where exactly nine years ago the Chicago Democrat first announced his candidacy to become the forty-fourth president.
“This rare speech before the state legislature is an early start to a common presidential practice of reflecting on their administration and constructing a narrative for their legacy – before various political analysts, historians, and the public at large have an opportunity to do so,” said Jared Labell, director of operations for Taxpayers United of America (TUA).
Obama will enter the House chamber to speak to the legislature, just across the rotunda from his former state Senate stomping grounds from 1997 until 2004, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. All eyes will be on him as he contemplates his past two decades in government, attempting to spin his record and bemoan the civility that is so elusory in twenty-first century American politics.
“President Obama is expected to focus on his personal experiences rather than offering up sweeping policy recommendations, although it is anticipated that he will tout his record of working across party lines and renew his call for an end to gerrymandering in America in general, and particularly in Illinois – gerrymandering being the practice of carving up political districts to capture preferred voters and guarantee election results,” said Labell. “Except Obama’s putting his legacy before the facts, forgetting that his bipartisan efforts are typically disastrous for taxpayers and that his political stardom began with the Chicago Combine, the longtime one party system of rulers and bureaucrats who for decades have helped destroy both the city and Illinois.”
Ryan Lizza’s July 2008 New Yorker article, Making It, argues the latter point at length, but principally relevant, “The partisan redistricting of Illinois may have been the most important event in Obama’s early political life. It immediately gave him the two things he needed to run for the Senate in 2004: money and power. He needed to have several times as much cash as he’d raised for his losing congressional race in 2000, and many of the state’s top donors now lived or worked in his district. More important, the statewide gerrymandering made it likely that Obama’s party would take over the State Senate in 2002, an event that would provide him with a platform from which to craft a legislative record in time for the campaign.”
As to the former point, Obama’s track record in the Illinois General Assembly isn’t something he should revisit during his speech later today, unless he wants to rehash his abysmal voting record and that old cliché about reaching across the aisle. In Obama’s case, however, reaching across the aisle is just a means to shove the government deeper in to the pockets of taxpayers.
“TUA has conducted a biennial Tax Survey of the Illinois General Assembly since 1983, rating legislators’ votes on the basis of their commitment to taxpayers, and Obama’s tenure from ’97-’04 is appallingly bad,” said Labell. “Between the 90th and 93rd Illinois General Assembly terms, then-State Senator Obama scored as high as thirty-four percent and as low as a whopping flat-out zero, indicating that anywhere from two-thirds to one-hundred percent of the time, Obama voted on behalf of the state, the government unions, and the tax-raisers – not the taxpayers who have to toil under the devastating policies of the government elite and Illinois’ political class.”
“If Obama addresses Illinois’ budget impasse today, now in the midst of its eighth month – and without a resolution in sight, he might want to skip over recounting the votes he cast during his first term in office, including: HB313, which allowed county boards to double their pensions and drive up property taxes in Illinois; HB110, an outrageous spending increase that boosted pensions for ninety-seven percent of Illinois’ state employees by fifty-four percent, costing taxpayers roughly $15 million each year; and SB3, which forced taxpayers to subsidize overly generous increases in pensions for government teachers, costing Illinois taxpayers tens of billions of dollars over the next few decades – and we still have a few decades more to go. These are prime examples of Obama’s version of working across the aisle: teaming up with a tax-raising Republican governor, Jim Edgar, with the end result of stiffing taxpayers,” said Labell. “When Obama says bipartisanship, he means the two parties coming together to loot taxpayers, which is of course prevalent in statehouses across the country and in the District of Criminals on the Potomac, where he must feel right at home after the last decade.”
Obama’s record didn’t improve in the U.S. Senate, as he received an annual F-rating in the single and low double digits from the National Taxpayers Union for his tenure from 2005-2007 (2008 being unavailable due to his election to the presidency).
“The public is well aware of the U.S. Senate record of Barack Obama morphing in to his ruinous two terms in the White House: from corporate bailouts at the start of his presidency, to his unprecedented crack down on whistleblowers; from ushering in the unaffordable care act known as Obamacare, to codifying ubiquitous NSA spying in to law; from shredding the Constitution by undermining individual rights and maintaining the shameful U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay; and to the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars squandered to continue and expand George W. Bush’s global military crusade and its brutal interventions in countless nations, including but not limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, and now Syria – it all begins with the Chicago Combine and the wasteland that spawns Illinois’ political elite,” said Labell. “And here Obama is, coming back to Springfield to carve out a nice legacy for himself the day after releasing his record $4.1 trillion budget for fiscal year 2017, which includes $3 trillion in proposed tax hikes.”
“You won’t find this passage noted on the doorway inside the statehouse, nor will it be found in the halls of the U.S. Congress, and it won’t adorn the entrance to the White House, the seat of the American Empire. But in all three cases, it would be fitting to post on the doorframes the inscription described in Dante’s Divine Comedy as he passes through the gates of hell. The engraving reads, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ Obama’s political legacy is the abandonment of hope and change – it’s replete with failure, from Springfield to D.C., and now back again. No matter how pessimistic the outlook seems presently, we must never back down from the defense of freedom. Our work is not yet done and we must maintain our long-term optimism to ensure free markets, peace, and individual liberty will one day mean something again in America,” concluded Labell.

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Chicago’s Latest Tobacco Tax Hike Snuffed Out – For Now

By on February 9, 2016   /   Chicago, Illinois, Latest, Taxpayer Alert  

View as PDF Chicago—On Monday Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s (D) latest package of tobacco tax hike proposals were stalled after more than three hours of testimony by supporters and opponents before the City Council Finance Committee. Challenges to the tax increases were heard from small business owners, tobacco and cigar associations, and Taxpayers United of America (TUA).
 “TUA opposes any and all new taxes on cigarettes, cigars, e-vapors, and other tobacco and related products,” says Jared Labell, TUA’s director of operations. “Higher taxes on tobacco and similar products will simply grow the black market for illicit production and smuggling outside of the scope of the government, just as we have witnessed with the history of prohibition and government intervention in the market. These proposed tax increases are bad for businesses, consumers, and taxpayers who are tired of Nanny State bureaucrats and their incessant proclamations.”
 The proposals up for debate before the Chicago City Council included raising the legal age to buy tobacco products in the city to 21, a 15-cent tax per unit in small cigar packs, increasing the cost of a 20-pack of “little cigars” of various brands by $3, and a 90-cent tax on larger individual cigars. Mayor Emanuel also wanted an additional $1.80 tax per ounce of smokeless tobacco and a $6.60 per-ounce tax on roll-your-own tobacco. This is all in addition to Mayor Emanuel’s budget for 2016, which already includes tax increases on electronic cigarettes, plus the 50-cent per pack tax on cigarettes enacted in the 2014 budget.
 “An increase in taxes on these products also presupposes that projected revenue will surge to help subsidize whatever pet project politicians claim they want to fund with these tax dollars ‘for the children.’ But in reality, between alternative products, changes in consumer demand, options outside Chicago’s city limits, and black market activity, governments tend to see a drop in revenue when using tax policy to shape public behavior.”
 “Chicago’s combined federal, state, and local per pack tax on cigarettes is currently $7.17 – the highest in the United States. Proponents of higher tobacco taxes claim this is a health issue, arguing that raising taxes will reduce consumption, yet these same advocates make the case that higher taxes on tobacco and related products are necessary to generate revenue from taxpayers to fund programs – which is logic that can only come from the minds of government officials,” said Labell.
 “Both government intervention in trade and the manipulation of tax policy to alter the behavior of the public always have a multitude of unintended consequences, and we will see them in droves if the City Council attempts to pass these measures again.”
 “These politically motivated tax hikes will impact businesses, consumers, and average folks trying to make a living – and in only negative ways. Public health is indeed an important issue, but draining taxpayers of more of their hard-earned money, hurting businesses financially, and dragging down Chicago’s already sluggish economy is no way to assist the public in the long-term,” concluded Labell.

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