Controlling the future growth of government spending is key to solving Illinoiss budget crisis. Done properly, tax and expenditure limits are a good way to ensure that government outlays do not grow faster than the publics ability to pay.
The Illinois Policy Institute is going down to Springfield on Wednesday, January 5 (Tomorrow) with our Liberty Leaders.
Including charges for alcohol, parties, and other "gratuitous expenditures."
Illinois already owes billions in overdue payments to state vendors and now is behind in payments to a state university.
The Problem Families are watching their budgets and managing spending as efficiently as possible, focusing on necessities and eliminating unessential spending. Government at every level should do the same—while some are, others are not. In the current economic climate most municipal governments are experiencing significant declines in revenues, which has led to spending cutbacks for...
The Problem Illinois’s inability to pay vendors on time is destabilizing many businesses with state contracts while at the same time hurting Illinois’s most vulnerable. According to the Illinois Comptroller’s Office, the state had $4.7 billion in payables at the end of the 2010 fiscal year in June and an additional $1.7 billion in additional...
Michigan is poised to pass a Right-to-Work law in the next couple of days. Union protesters are staked out at the Capitol building making their anti-Right-to-Work opinions known. This is a key point in a huge political battle that will have repercussions that go well beyond the state of Michigan. Your friendly neighborhood labor expert...
Testimony of Kate Piercy, Director of Government Reform, Illinois Policy Institute Submitted to the Special Committee on Workers’ Compensation Reform Friday, December 3, 2010 Co-Chairpersons Bradley and Brady, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Kate Piercy, and I am the Director of Government Reform for the Illinois Policy Institute. We...
The Problem Encouraging volunteerism among Illinois’s senior citizens is a worthy goal, with many benefits for both individual volunteers and those they serve. Illinois’s Foster Grandparents Program, housed in the Illinois Department of Aging, is meant to connect “volunteers” with “opportunities for seniors to work with children with exceptional needs.” However, the program’s structure leads...
by Kristina Rasmussen Illinois Senator Dick Durbin help to vote down a proposed Senate ban on earmarks today, reports The Hill. As if tea pot museums and bridges to nowhere weren’t enough, Illinoisans had yet another reason to oppose Congressional earmarks. According to a new Cato Institute study by Brandon Arnold, Illinois is an “earmark donor state”—one that receives...
by Kate Piercy The Illinois Policy Institute has highlighted various instances where Illinois government employees are paid above national averages and much of the time land in the highest earners rankings. Our legislators, allexecutive officers, including the governor, and judges, make some of the highest salaries compared to counterparts nationwide. The Wall Street Journal today discussed President Obama’s recent...
by Ashley Muchow Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy has made it on our list of bloggable material for quite some. She has, yet again, delivered another applicable piece of statistical analysis. In the graph below, de Rugy uses the earliest records available to plot the historical path of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and the trend of the top...
by Kate Piercy Free rides aren’t so free: According to a report from the University of Illinois, the free-rides program initiated and sent through the legislature by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich costs the CTA, Metra and Pace between $38 million and $116 million last year. On top of this, “Thousands of fraudulent free rides have been...
by Wesley Fox Over the last two years, many states have faced large budget shortfalls due to declines in revenue and continued spending at unaffordable rates. Some have dramatically cutback spending to balance their budgets, while others have raised taxes. The CATO Institute’s Fiscal Policy Report Card provides an excellent assessment of the responses of U.S. governors...