Doomsday Is Here For The State Of Illinois!

Going Bust!

• As many as 48 out of 50 states are insolvent. Illinois may be the first but it won’t be the last. The big one is California, the 7th or 8th largest economy in the world! America is bankrupt at all levels: federal, state,  municipal, corporate … individual … Yet the government has just increase the war budget to US$1 Trillion. Ask yourself why? The snakes in the District of Criminals (DC) just provided about US$27 Trillion of bailouts and guarantees to the banksters. Ask yourself why? This is nothing but the rape of the country by the Illuminati international banksters. The next stage is the destruction of the country via war! And I mean war in the homeland of America! Chicago Sun-Times reports:
   
  It will take a massive tax increase — and $2 billion more in cuts — to reach solvency, group says.
    
  SPRINGFIELD – To become solvent, the state must enact the largest tax-increase package in Illinois history, whack another $2 billion from already starved government programs and wrest major financial concessions from the state’s unionized work force, a nonpartisan government watchdog contends.
   
  In a new analysis of Illinois’ “horrific” finances, the Civic Federation lays out the painful choices awaiting Gov. Quinn and the Legislature as they stare down an epic $12.8 billion budget deficit that has choked the flow of state cash to public universities and schools, transit systems and social-service agencies to the point of economic collapse.
    
  “Doomsday is here for the State of Illinois,” said Laurence Msall, the organization’s president. The Civic Federation recommends that the state income tax be increased from 3 percent to 5 percent for individuals, that retirees’ pension and Social Security checks be taxed for the first time at the same rate as workers’ paychecks, and the tax on cigarettes be raised by another $1 per pack. The group also favors getting rid of $181 million in corporate tax breaks.
   
  Those tax increases, which would generate more than $8 billion, should come only if the state first can persuade its unionized employees to pay more toward their pensions and health care, cut pension benefits for new workers and reduce overall spending by $2.1 billion to 2007 levels. Medicaid programs and elementary and secondary schools would be spared from those cuts to avoid sacrificing federal stimulus dollars, Msall said. “This is an economically reasonable approach to a horrific situation,” he said.
   
  But AFSCME Council 31, state government’s largest union, has shown no interest in having its members — who have accepted furloughs and deferred pay increases — pay more toward their pensions and health care or in establishing what is known as a two-tier pension system where new employees would receive a less-generous retirement package than existing workers.
   
  “Since this proposal to slash $2 billion exempts education and health care, it would mean reducing human services and public safety,” AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall said. “We think that’s reckless, especially in a recession that’s driving demand for public services up, not down.”
   
  The Civic Federation’s recommendations would enable the state to pay down the $12.8 billion deficit by more than $10 billion by June 2011, but $2.1 billion in red ink would carry over for at least another year under the group’s plan. The report’s release comes as Quinn prepares to launch an online site Wednesday to begin soliciting public input on what should be included or left out of his fiscal 2011 budget proposal, which he’ll unveil March 10.
   
  Quinn’s office declined comment on the Civic Federation report but expressed interest in “working with the group during the upcoming budget debate.” Ground Zero in that debate is the Illinois House. Speaker Michael Madigan has insisted that his GOP rivals sign on to any tax increases and has begun calling them “dropouts” for what he regards as their inflexibility on finding new revenue.
   
  “I don’t do predictions,” Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said, when asked about the Civic Federation plan and the chances any of it might pass. “I think the speaker has supported a cigarette tax increase. I think Democrats supported starting down the road to a two-tier pension system, but the ‘dropouts’ have done nothing.”
   
  House Minority Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) has taken a tax increase off the table, instead pressing for budget cuts and pension reforms and noting the state’s fiscal crisis bloomed under seven years of Democratic-crafted budgets that Republicans didn’t vote for.
   
  Told of the Civic Federation’s recommendations, Cross spokeswoman Sara Wojcicki withheld judgment on the report but offered no signs that Republicans are prepared to move off the dime on any tax increases this spring: “I’m not sure much has changed.”
   
  Msall, with the Civic Federation, said that if lawmakers leave Springfield without getting out of the state’s budgetary black hole, everyone in Illinois will suffer. “It’s not sustainable to continue to ignore your vendors. It’s not sustainable to ask your schools, local governments and homes for the developmentally disabled to go out to the market to borrow” because the state isn’t fulfilling its funding promises, Msall said. “A failure to effectively address this crisis in a comprehensive form will result in not only lost opportunities but in greater pain.”

And you thought Greece was a problem! America is in deeper trouble! Source: CBPP survey.

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