“We’ve become a col­lec­tivist econ­o­my in Illi­nois,” Gov. Bruce Rauner recent­ly told the Chica­go Tri­bune. ​“It’s crush­ing us. And no prob­lem is going to get fixed unless we bring more eco­nom­ic free­dom into the state. And I believe that very passionately.”

For the mil­lions of ordi­nary Illi­noisans who rely on the state’s net­work of pub­lic insti­tu­tions, the sit­u­a­tion is dire. For the state’s near-bil­lion­aire Repub­li­can gov­er­nor, how­ev­er, things appear to be going exact­ly as planned.

Illi­nois is head­ing for a major cri­sis. It has been more than a year and a half since the state had an offi­cial bud­get that appro­pri­at­ed funds for basic ser­vices. And, as of this month, the cof­fers will dry up and a pub­lic sec­tor already on life-sup­port will quick­ly slip into crit­i­cal condition.

To be clear, when Rauner talks about a ​“col­lec­tivist econ­o­my,” he’s attack­ing any­thing meant to serve the pub­lic or advance the com­mon good, which includes every­thing from pub­lic schools and uni­ver­si­ties, to health agen­cies, trans­porta­tion and so much more.

Rauner will be fur­ther embold­ened by the Repub­li­can vic­to­ries in Novem­ber — and this makes the need to build a unit­ed front against his agen­da all the more cru­cial. The only force capa­ble of build­ing that front and win­ning is orga­nized labor. The strat­e­gy of pas­sive­ly await­ing res­cue from the Democ­rats has led us into the mess we’re cur­rent­ly in.

Con­sid­er how things have gone in Spring­field for the past two years. Rauner has used his veto pow­er as gov­er­nor to pre­vent any full state bud­get from being passed until the Democ­rats, who have sub­stan­tial majori­ties in both cham­bers of the leg­is­la­ture, cave in and sup­port his so-called turn­around agen­da. That agen­da pro­pos­es across-the-board cuts to high­er edu­ca­tion spend­ing, severe cuts to oth­er state ser­vices such as med­ical care and a weak­en­ing — if not out­right elim­i­na­tion — of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers in Illinois.

The gov­er­nor is will­ing to bring the state to the brink of col­lapse to get his way. The result is that Illi­nois is the only state in the coun­try that hasn’t had a full bud­get for more than a year and a half. Grant­ed, Rauner and his allies real­ized that the chaos their hostage-tak­ing tac­tics are caus­ing might cost them votes, so they cyn­i­cal­ly allowed a shoe-string, stop-gap par­tial fund­ing bill to pass the leg­is­la­ture in order to cush­ion the impact of their blows until after the Novem­ber elec­tions. But at the end of last month, the stop-gap fund­ing bill ran out.

Still, much of dam­age caused by Rauner’s arro­gant fis­cal brinkman­ship is already done, so in a sense his onslaught has already borne fruit. This is espe­cial­ly true of Illinois’s once renowned sys­tem of high­er education.

As some­one who works at a state uni­ver­si­ty, I see the dam­age caused by Rauner’s poli­cies first hand. The attacks on high­er edu­ca­tion in the state rever­ber­ate through­out the halls and class­rooms at North­east­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty, where I teach. You can see it in the low morale among fac­ul­ty, in the mood among stu­dents in the class­room, in the gen­er­al sense of uncer­tain­ty about the future of the school. Stu­dent finan­cial aid is being threat­ened and uni­ver­si­ty com­put­er labs are board­ed up with signs that they are indef­i­nite­ly closed until the bud­get cri­sis is resolved. Count­less oth­er schools are in sim­i­lar straits.

The stop-gap fund­ing bill passed last sum­mer has post­poned the prospect of imme­di­ate destruc­tion, but the long-term prog­no­sis remains unclear at best — and apoc­a­lyp­tic at worst.

Rauner is not the sole culprit

How did we get into this mess? And, more impor­tant­ly, how do we get out of it?

Rauner’s goals and meth­ods are dis­as­trous. But it’s impor­tant to point out that the con­trast­ing pro­pos­als of Illi­nois Democ­rats also leave much to be desired. Democ­rats have agreed to mod­est cuts to high­er edu­ca­tion — noth­ing near Rauner’s demands for a 20 per­cent cut for the 2016 – 2017 fis­cal year and a 30 per­cent cut for the pre­vi­ous year, but still very dam­ag­ing on top of the decades of cuts that the sys­tem has already endured.

What’s more, the dys­func­tion­al régime in Spring­field has, for the most part, been steered by Democ­rats who have gov­erned by ran­sack­ing pen­sion funds for work­ers, doing dirty deals with pri­vate sec­tor financiers, and keep­ing in place one of the most regres­sive state tax sys­tems in the entire coun­try — all while under­fund­ing edu­ca­tion, tran­sit, health and more.

This statewide mess is the rea­son Rauner was able to sneak his way into the governor’s office in 2014. Like Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, Rauner sold him­self as a pop­ulist insur­gent tak­ing on a caste of cor­rupt machine politi­cians. And, like Trump, Rauner eked out a vic­to­ry because of extreme­ly low turnout and wide­spread dis­af­fec­tion among vot­ers with the sta­tus quo.

So, what can be done? The first step is to rec­og­nize that the polit­i­cal class in Illi­nois has con­sis­tent­ly under­fund­ed edu­ca­tion and oth­er pub­lic ser­vices for decades. Rauner isn’t the only cul­prit. The deep­er prob­lem is that there is a sweep­ing bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus in favor of aus­ter­i­ty — in favor, that is, of forc­ing the work­ing-class major­i­ty of the state to pick up the bill for the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis through accept­ing bud­get cuts and dimin­ished liv­ing standards.

This con­sen­sus must be bro­ken and defeat­ed. Let us not for­get that we live in one of the rich­est coun­tries on the plan­et. And Illi­nois is a very wealthy state, with scores of bil­lion­aires and the 13th high­est per capi­ta income. There are mas­sive pri­vate con­cen­tra­tions of wealth in the city of Chica­go. There’s no rea­son why we should cut a sin­gle cent out from the edu­ca­tion bud­get. On the con­trary, we should be expand­ing invest­ment in edu­ca­tion as oth­er states are doing.

It wouldn’t be hard to do. If Illi­nois adopt­ed the same grad­u­at­ed income tax sys­tem that Iowa has, more than $6.3 bil­lion could be raised annu­al­ly in addi­tion­al rev­enue at the same time that the major­i­ty of tax­pay­ers would pay at a low­er rate. Illi­nois could also adopt a finan­cial trans­ac­tion tax — for exam­ple, by charg­ing traders on the Chica­go Mer­can­tile Exchange a small fee of $1 per trans­ac­tion — to raise sub­stan­tial new revenue.

From a pure­ly tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, the solu­tion to the cri­sis is sim­ple: no cuts, tax the rich. The pol­i­tics of how to get from here to there, how­ev­er, are any­thing but straightforward.

Sus­tained, large-scale job actions are nec­es­sary to win

Many in the labor move­ment are under­stand­ably anx­ious to get rid of Rauner. This is as true of my own union, the Illi­nois Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (IFT), as it is of any oth­er. But this sin­gle-mind­ed focus on Rauner is a los­ing strat­e­gy. It is a recipe for man­ag­ing the con­tin­u­ing decline of the state, not for tak­ing it for­ward. Our fun­da­men­tal oppo­nent isn’t Rauner — abra­sive, unlik­able, unpleas­ant and reac­tionary as he is — but the broad gov­ern­ment con­sen­sus in favor of aus­ter­i­ty and neoliberalism.

The labor move­ment is the only force capa­ble of break­ing this con­sen­sus. To be sure, com­pared to its rel­a­tive hey­day in decades past, the Illi­nois labor move­ment is weak. But it remains the most potent weapon work­ing peo­ple in the state have to over­turn aus­ter­i­ty and increase invest­ment in the pub­lic good. Illi­nois still has 847,000 union mem­bers, and there are scores more in the ranks of the unor­ga­nized who would glad­ly join them. If unit­ed and mobi­lized, work­ers have immense pow­er to turn the tide in Illi­nois and beyond. Mobi­liz­ing union mem­ber­ship means more than sim­ply bussing peo­ple to protest in the state capi­tol, how­ev­er. It must involve a will­ing­ness to con­sid­er work­place actions of var­i­ous kinds, espe­cial­ly strikes.

To my knowl­edge, the only large-scale job action ini­ti­at­ed by a union that demand­ed increased state invest­ment in edu­ca­tion was the strike led by the Chica­go Teach­ers Union last year. Though it last­ed only one day, the April 1 strike had a pow­er­ful short-run effect on pub­lic debate about the bud­get cri­sis. Sud­den­ly it became much more real­is­tic to talk about rais­ing new rev­enue by tax­ing the wealthy, when only a few months ear­li­er pub­lic dis­cus­sion cen­tered on how deep cuts should go.

As I see it, the April strike was an open­ing sal­vo in what must become a larg­er, sus­tained, statewide fight against Rauner and his enablers. What, for exam­ple, would it look like if my own union, the IFT, mobi­lized its 100,000+ mem­ber­ship for a statewide walk­out demand­ing the pas­sage of a state bud­get that ful­ly funds pub­lic edu­ca­tion in Illi­nois? What would it look like if oth­er unions joined the action? And how could this move, in turn, be lever­aged to twist the arms of reluc­tant politi­cians as well as gal­va­nize orga­niz­ing efforts to increase the ranks of union members?

We won’t know until we try. And try we must.

Sure­ly Rauner’s deter­mi­na­tion to crush AFSCME in Illi­nois is rea­son to con­sid­er joint job actions with work­ers in oth­er unions. So, too, could Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union (ATU) locals 241 and 308 join in and ratch­et up the pres­sure. ATU rep­re­sents more than 10,000 pub­lic tran­sit work­ers who are cur­rent­ly get­ting a raw deal from Chica­go May­or Rahm Emanuel’s appoint­ed Chica­go Tran­sit Author­i­ty czar in ongo­ing con­tract nego­ti­a­tions. The list of unions under the gun goes on and on.

The time has passed to depend on unre­li­able Demo­c­rat politi­cians to look out for our inter­ests. We need to find our voice and chart our own path — for our sakes, for the sakes of stu­dents and all those who depend on pub­lic ser­vices and, indeed, for the future of the state as a whole. The attacks are sure to keep com­ing and the only way to defend our­selves is to har­ness the fact that we — not the Rauners or the Trumps — are the ones who make Illi­nois run.