The new federal spending bill, dubbed the “CRomnibus,” codifies that the ACA payments to insurers are budget-neutral, as the revenue to fund them will come from fees already assessed on health-insurance plans. This is not the blank check that insurers were hoping for.
There’s a reason Bruce Rauner topped Institutional Investor’s Pension 40 list – he has the potential to fix the nation’s worst pension crisis.
But Chicago’s minimum-wage hike is a stopgap for jobs.
Chicago City Council claims that over 400,000 workers in Chicago will get pay hikes. What lawmakers should be studying is how many tens of thousands of those workers are going to be unnecessarily thrown out of work the next time the economy slows down, property taxes go up or a new technology comes along that can replace human labor.
The state’s entrenched culture of cronyism is blindingly clear, especially to those who report on it for a living.
City officials don’t get very much right. But if public pressure makes them act to ensure greater police transparency and more protection of individual rights, we may have good reason to be optimistic.
The expedited hearing is good news. It means the state will know specifically what it can do to address its $111 billion unfunded pension debt sooner rather than later.