Obama: Adopting the Illinois Model

by Emily Dietrich President Obama presented a $450 billion proposal to a joint session of Congress last week. He instructed lawmakers: “Pass this bill, and hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people will have the hope and the dignity of a summer job next year. And their parents – their parents – low-income Americans who...

by Emily Dietrich

President Obama presented a $450 billion proposal to a joint session of Congress last week. He instructed lawmakers: “Pass this bill, and hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged young people will have the hope and the dignity of a summer job next year. And their parents – their parents – low-income Americans who desperately want to work, will have more ladders out of poverty.”

One week and a U.S. Census Bureau report later, poverty is dominating the national discussion.

That’s because the latest annual poverty report unveiled some stark, and startling, figures. In 2010, roughly one in seven Americans were poor.

Of the 46.2 million Americans who were poor, 1.82 million were Illinoisans. This represents the largest number of poor in Illinois since 1992. Moreover, the statewide poverty rate rose, for the third consecutive year, to 14.1 percent.

The starkness of the situation is readily apparent. Not as obvious, though, is the irony of the situation.

For almost a decade, Illinois has done exactly what Obama preached to lawmakers in last week’s joint session.

Since at least 2003, the state has massively invested in a culture of tax, borrow and spend. What’s been the payoff? Illinois has one of the worst – if not the worst – funded pensions in the nation. The state has a multi-billion dollar backlog of bills and the state unemployment rate rose again in August to 9.9 percent.

Is this the model Obama should follow for the rest of the nation? Absolutely not.

But the bad news for Illinoisans doesn’t end there.

The current governor, Pat Quinn, fully embraces the culture of borrowing and taxing. He signed into law a record tax increase that slammed Illinoisans and businesses with higher tax rates in January 2011.

There’s no better example than Illinois to illustrate that massive social spending has failed to raise people out of poverty – both here in the Midwest and nationally. Short-term fixes and creating a dependency class worsen the problem.

Only through long-term, sustainable work can American’s truly support their families.

At the end of the day, it isn’t a Washington spending-spree or an Illinois tax-hike that’s going to put people back to work and raise them out of poverty. Free-markets are, and have always been, the best way to help the poor and disadvantaged.