Leadership change needed down state

There is no tax hike, and state workers will get paid, but beyond that, there is not much to really like about the state’s new budget. That is because after months of wrangling, after it became apparent that legislative leaders had no intention of making Gov. Pat Quinn look good, and after dire warnings of doom and gloom about not funding social services, the Legislature simply sidestepped the structural deficit problem and acted like it didn’t exist.

So we get a budget that seems to be balanced this year, but it is balanced on future money and loans and other fiscal legerdemain, while no one, and that means no one, considers this the Legislature’s finest hour.

See, this was not supposed to happen this year. Had not the Legislature succeeded in running former Gov. Rod Blagojevich out of Springfield? Surely, he was the problem and his intransigence kept bills from being paid and deals from being hatched and budgets from being balanced. With Blagojevich out of the way, a new spirit of kumbaya was supposed to overtake the Legislature, and Gov. Quinn would work with his fellow Democrats and usher in a new era of cooperation in government.

Of course, an $11.5 billion budget deficit in the face of a competitive governor’s race tends to put a chill on the camaraderie.

Quinn wanted an income tax increase, but few Democrats in the General Assembly wanted to face their constituents after raising taxes. They saw how Todd Stroger was savaged in Cook County for raising taxes on the cusp of a recession. How much more would they be pilloried for raising personal taxes during a recession?

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