Lawmakers made no serious attempt to balance the new budget, instead counting on a federal bailout. They accepted an $1,800 raise for themselves, while only making significant cuts to education.

The years 2010 through 2019 will go down in Illinois history as a decade of public policy failure and economic decline. High fixed costs for pensions and government worker health care have prevented the state from balancing its budget in any year since 2001. Since the Great Recession in 2008, the state’s fiscal imbalance has...