COVID-19 is a severe illness for many who catch it, and it’s uniquely dangerous to people with other health conditions. Ninety percent of patients who are hospitalized or die from COVID-19 suffer from diabetes, obesity, hypertension, chronic lung or cardiovascular disease, according to the CDC. We need to adopt strategies for protecting the vulnerable among us when we go back to work -- hopefully soon.

COVID-19 is frightening and dangerous to state and local finances too. While Pew reports that states started 2020 with record financial reserves, and that the median state could fully operate for 28 days without revenue by drawing on those “rainy day” reserves, Truth in Accounting’s research indicates that only a dozen states are solvent enough to weather the onset of COVID-19.

States such as Connecticut and New Jersey, with pre-existing conditions like shrinking populations due to excessive taxes and debts, sclerotic bureaucracies and structural budget imbalances are most at risk from COVID-19. And no state is more at risk from COVID-19 than Illinois: It has the lowest credit ratings, highest taxes, highest unfunded pension debt, smallest rainy-day fund, fastest shrinking population and deep structural budget deficits.

Illinois’ governor and senators have taken the lead in seeking federal assistance for states and municipalities because of these pre-existing conditions. Illinois needs federal help more because the COVID-19 crisis compounds its pre-existing situation.

Surprisingly, some Illinois politicians pretend publicly that our finances are OK as our leadership scrambles in Washington for more help. But, if the federal government doesn’t come through with a massive amount of liquidity and aid for Illinois, these same folks will claim that the financial crisis hitting Illinois like a hurricane is solely the result of COVID-19.

Don’t believe them. Anyone paying attention knows Illinois suffers from chronic financial problems and that it’s been failing its residents already for years, which is why Illinois’s population consistently shrinks. Nonetheless, the state needs the U.S. to step up and do what it takes to Make Illinois Healthy Again.

Option 1: The federal government provides tens of billions to Illinois to help with our short-term revenue shortfall and rescue our nearly insolvent pensions for state and municipal workers -- something in the range of $300 billion in federal aid would work.

The federal government offered $350 billion to small businesses in the paycheck protection plan in order to pay the wages of small business employees during the crisis. Illinois needs just a bit less for its “pension protection plan” to assure that every government worker in Illinois gets the pensions our politicians promised -- including the 20,000 people with annual pensions in excess of $100,000 who get a 3% annual increase every year for life and who pay no state income taxes.

States that offer more modest pension plans to their employees, or that funded their pensions, are not likely to support this pension protection plan. Plus, states with large pension deficits will also want to be bailed out, which would cost trillions. Yet, this is the option many Democrats seem to favor.

Option 2: The federal government provides Illinois a few billion this year to ameliorate the immediate COVID-19 revenue shortfall and offers Illinois a few billion more each of the next few years if it stabilizes its finances and stems its population exodus by reforming excessive pensions while protecting middle income workers with moderate pensions.

Many are surprised to learn it’s illegal in Illinois for the legislature to reform state and municipal pensions. The state legislature may cut services or increase taxes, but may not decrease pension or retiree health benefits under our state constitution. This means Illinois’s primary obligation is providing government workers with lifetime income and health care; Illinois serves its people only to the extent resources remain thereafter.

That sounds medieval, because it is: People who are obliged to pay -- but may not reduce or reform -- lifetime income previously granted to government employees are servants.

The federal government has the power and duty to fix this problem. Article IV of the U.S. Constitution provides “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” In a republic, the people are sovereign, not servants. A republic is what Lincoln called government of, by and for the people. The U.S. Constitution commands the federal government to guarantee that the people always control the pay and benefits of those who govern the state.

So, unless the federal government prefers to pay Illinois’s pensions, it must empower the people to reform excessive pensions. For example, the federal government could pre-empt Illinois’s constitution to eliminate the prohibition on pension reform with a statute such as this:

Securing the health, safety, welfare and property of its residents is each state’s supreme obligation. If and to the extent a state’s legislature and governor determine that its necessary or proper to modify the terms of any pension or other pay or benefit plan for the state to perform its supreme obligation, the United States hereby grants, and delegates to the legislature, the power and authority to change any pay, pension or benefit plans for government employees.

Illinois needs you, Uncle Sam! Illinois was already failing before COVID-19, and now our state’s condition is even more critical. Please help us Make Illinois Healthy Again: Either give our people the power to reform our pensions or pay the pensions for us.