Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is getting hit with a nationwide backlash over his suggestion that the federal government bail out the state employees
The financial meltdown and Great Recession is teaching an expensive lesson: When big institutions face financial crises, governments are all too eager to bail them out.
Illinois’ state debt: Illinois’ total state debt is $271 billion Illinois’ state debt has ballooned to $51,000 per household Illinois has roughly $9 billion in unpaid bills Illinois will spend more on pensions than on education by 2016 Illinois’ economic performance: Illinois is 47th in job growth Illinois is 48th in economic outlook Illinois is 48th in...
On Thursday, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the credit rating of Chicago Public Schools. The school district’s credit rating now sits at A2 with a negative outlook, the same rating given to Illinois, which has the lowest rating of all 50 states. According to Moody’s, the downgrade reflects CPS’s weakened financial condition, caused primarily by the facts that:...
The goal of No Pension Bailout is to prevent the federal government from bailing out Illinois or any other states that have mismanaged their funds. We oppose a bailout because not only would it destroy state sovereignty and the concept of fiscal federalism once and for all, it would also transfer trillions of dollars from...
Negotiations between the State of Illinois and District Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees are at a standstill.
A new report by the Joint Economic Committee, or JEC, provides even more evidence that the federal government should never bail out state pension debt. Here are just a few of their findings.
Last week the Illinois Policy Institute launched "NoPensionBailout.com," a national project aimed at preventing a federal bailout of state pension debt.
After nearly a year of collective bargaining and a seven day strike, you have reached a tentative agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union.
For the third straight month, Illinois' unemployment rate climbed. More than 9.1 percent of Illinoisans are now unemployed, a full percentage point higher than the national average of 8.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
All across the country, states are grappling with pension funds that are massively underfunded. Under new accounting rules, Illinois’ unfunded pension debt stands at a whopping $209 billion. And that’s not counting the debt for retiree health insurance, pension bonds or all local retirement debt. Recent calculations have put the total level of states’ unfunded pension...
Rahm Emanuel famously argued that
The Illinois Policy Institute launched