This is similar to what any new Democratic president will face upon taking office. The federal government hasn’t had a balanced budget since the Clinton administration, and it, too, is facing massive unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare. This has been a bipartisan affair: While a small portion of the current deficit is due to the recently passed Trump tax cuts, the remainder is a result of increasing spending on entitlements, defense and other domestic priorities.

AD

AD

Pritzker’s budget address Wednesday was an opportunity to do what President Bill Clinton did in similar circumstances in the mid-1990s: restore fiscal discipline while protecting Democratic spending priorities. Instead, he is proposing what every Democratic contender has promised: new spending programs, protections for all existing spending and increased taxes on the rich.

The speech itself is a combination of hope and chutzpah. Pritzker hopes that legalizing marijuana and sports gambling will bring the state an extra $370 million a year. He hopes that a new tax on managed care companies will bring in an additional $390 million a year and more federal money for Medicaid on top of that, without increasing insurance premiums that might drive more people to use government-finance programs. He hopes that legislators getting to know each other as people will lead to more bipartisan cooperation, by which he clearly means Republican support for his proposed tax hikes. That’s a lot of hope for what, in the context of a $39 billion budget and $15 billion in unpaid bills, is pretty small change.

The chutzpah comes from his complete unwillingness to slow down the growth of government. He exempted virtually all existing government spending from significant cuts. He proposed nearly $500 million in new program spending — on child care subsidies, preschool subsidies, colleges and more. And, to top it off, he proposed hiking the state’s minimum wage from $8.25 an hour to $15 an hour, as if that sharp hike wouldn’t cause havoc among small businesses and restaurants.

AD

AD

The classic definition of chutzpah is murdering your parents and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. Pritzker’s audacious gambit has to be the fiscal version of that legendary act.

The CEO of the free-market Illinois Policy Institute, John Tillman, has a poignant observation about the governor’s ideas. “Government always has a choice,” he told me. “It can side with people who work for and receive money from government, or it can side with the people who pay for government. Governor Pritzker has chosen to side with government workers over ordinary families. We are hopeful that will change.”

To top it off, Pritzker proposed changing the Illinois Constitution to impose a progressive income tax. In his tale, taxing the rich would bring in enough money to begin to pay off the accumulated debt, increase payments to fund the pensions and finally place the state’s budget on stable ground. That’s the sort of pledge most Democratic contenders make too. The problem is that just isn’t so.

AD

AD

To understand why, take a look at Wisconsin and Iowa, the states Pritzker cited as models. Illinois’s flat income tax rate is 4.95 percent for all taxpayers. Wisconsin levies a top rate of 7.65 percent on married couples earning more than $336,000 a year, but it also levies a higher rate than Illinois for all families earning more than $14,980. Iowa’s top rate is 8.98 percent, but it kicks in on couples earning more than $71,910 a year. It also levies a higher rate than Illinois’s on families earning more than $14,382 a year. Both states know that to get the real money, you have to tax everyone at higher rates. Pritzker’s tax hike, like the hikes that many other national Democrats have proposed, might start only for the rich, but ultimately, it will have to be extended to the middle and working classes to pay for all the spending they propose.

The comic Steve Martin once played a character on “Saturday Night Live” called Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber. In the skit, Theodoric is the town doctor, and he follows the most current medical practice — which always involves bleeding the patient. Democratic faith in more spending and taxing the rich is as faith-based as was bloodletting — and can often be as fatal to the patient too.