Just hours after the Illinois Gaming Board awarded the state’s coveted 10th casino license to the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines last week, State Sen. Terry Link (D-Waukegan) began rallying for the state to add more.
“We will be looking into an expansion of gaming in the next session,” Link told the Lake County News-Sun. “We want to do a capital bill. This would be one of the avenues in which to do it.”
Such proposals should come as no surprise. For some time, Illinois state lawmakers have looked to gaming expansion as an easy way to fetch big bucks.
Although hospital surgeries and
emergency room visits dropped slightly in the third quarter of this
year compared with the same period in 2007, health care consumption is
generally considered recession proof. If people are sick, they go get
checked out, regardless of the economic climate. That’s problematic in
an economic crunch, because as revenue sources dry up, it’s often state
and federal medical programs that are first on the chopping block.
Illinois currently owes
a whopping $4.5 billion to health care providers, including more than
$2 billion in Medicaid reimbursement. While state officials advanced
a crucial $1.4 billion borrowing plan earlier this month, it won’t
begin to cover the state’s medical debt. And Illinois isn’t alone,
according to the Washington Post:
Already, 19 states—including Maryland and Virginia—and the
District of Columbia have lowered payments to hospitals and nursing
homes, eliminated coverage for some treatments, and forced some
recipients out of the insurance program completely.
Barack Obama’s transition team has signaled that
extra help for Medicaid will be included as part of his
administration’s economic stimulus proposal. And like spending on neighborhood stabilization -- which we covered last week -- it makes both moral and economic sense to prioritize Medicaid payments.
A new study by Families USA
underscores the point.
It’s no secret that Illinois
government is a bit unstable these days. Not only is the General
Assembly holding impeachment hearings of Gov. Rod Blagojevich but the
state has run up a huge budget deficit and both parties elected new Senate leaders last month. By January 21 of next year, things might
be a bit more settled. If not, how the state spends crucial federal
assistance could become a big issue.
“If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill
Every day, we see the painful downward spiral of an economy dominated by speculation and paper profits intended to maximize short-term return at the expense of our nation’s long-term health. In the current global financial crisis, we feel the effects of that philosophy in ways that threaten serious destabilization. We now must rebuild what 25 years of failure has taken from us: a vibrant, healthy middle class that honors labor, creates real wealth, grows strong communities, and helps to lift our fellow citizens out of poverty. We must rapidly implement new and innovative solutions to heal our environment rather than hasten its demise. Specifically, we must re-discover, re-invent, and re-build manufacturing in the knowledge economy.
State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias appeared on CNBC's Squawk Box yesterday to discuss "The Blagojevich Effect" -- specifically, how the governor's arrest last week cost taxpayers $20 million by driving up the interest rate on the state's short-term bond deal. During the discussion, Giannoulias dropped a nugget I hadn't heard yet: Illinois is one of only two states in the country under a "negative credit watch" by the rating agency Standard & Poor's. California is the only other state with this honor (which is not the kind of company we want to be keeping).
Also, notice how the hosts have some fun with Alexi at the end, signing off, "Thanks, governor." Watch:
Although Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s
arrest initially threw the deal into limbo, state officials came to an
agreement last night to move forward with a crucial $1.4 billion
borrowing plan. While not a fiscal panacea, the bond obligations will
provide Medicaid reimbursements that have been held up for months and
will help cover the $4 billion pile of backlogged bills owed to state vendors. Reuters has more:
The federal charges filed against Blagojevich last
week, accusing him of trying to sell political favors for campaign
contributions and jobs, forced the debt sale to be postponed from
Thursday to Tuesday. Madigan raised questions about certifying the debt
sale while the governor’s legal problems hung over the state.
Natalie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney
General Lisa Madigan, said the new language was found to be acceptable
by bond attorneys working on the deal, clearing the way for Madigan to
certify the deal.
When the New York Timesreported
on Sunday about the increasing number of states whose unemployment
funds are drying up, we wondered how Illinois’ accounts are doing. What
we found was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary fiscal landscape: the
Prairie State’s unemployment fund is flush with cash.
That’s
right, flush. The Illinois’ unemployment insurance trust fund had $1.6
billion on hand at the end of November, compared with $1.9 billion last
year. Even with the economy in dire straits and a growing number of
people dipping into the fund, the state is prepared, the Department of
Employment Security’s Greg Rivara tells us.
That being said, the Times found that our neighbors to the east aren’t doing as well:
Amid all the twelve-figure bailouts and theoretical arguments about how to repair the American economy, I was so relieved to hear Dan Swinney's comments last Sunday as a guest on Bruce DuMont's Beyond The Beltway. Swinney is a labor guy and, as such, has a very practical, on-the-ground perspective when it comes to reversing our economic troubles and regaining competitiveness on the global stage. He sees the big picture and, unlike many, is focused on the "opportunity" in this crisis. But at the same time he has started small -- specifically, with a high school on Chicago's West Side.
As we wrote in a feature article last summer, Austin Polytechnical Academy seeks to train local teenagers as skilled laborers who can fill vacant, high-paying positions in the city's industrial sector. The school, which opened its doors in the fall of 2007, is part of the Chicago Public Schools' Renaissance 2010 program and there are several other similar institutions scheduled to pop up around the city in the coming years.
While there was already plenty of support for Swinney's model before the financial meltdown, interest in replicating it elsewhere is rapidly growing these days. As Swinney explains in the clip below, Barack Obama has endorsed the idea and representatives from the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association rolled through Chicago this week to take a look at his pilot project in the hopes of launching something similar on the West Coast. Watch:
As you can see, Swinney's perspective is extremely easy to wrap your head around. We've lost a lot of the unskilled labor opportunities to assembly lines elsewhere. And we're not going to get those jobs back. But if America invests in training students in advanced, skilled work -- with support from the private sector -- we can become a world leader in what he describes as "complicated products."
At Barack Obama’s press conference last Tuesday, ABC 7’s
Andy Shaw told him that across the country “mayors and county board
presidents and governors are facing hemorrhaging budgets and … are
wondering, to paraphrase the late, great Mike Royko, ‘Where’s ours?’”
In his response,
the president-elect made clear -- and rightfully so -- that the Prairie State won’t be in line
for any extra goodies. Nonetheless, Illinois should certainly be near the front of the line when it comes to assistance and investment.
A new report
from the National Governors’ Association (NGA) has outlined $18 billion
worth of ready-to-go capital projects that would give state economies a
jolt and put folks back to work. As the Stateline graph below shows,
Illinois ranks fifth
nationwide, with $831 million worth of road, schools, and other
infrastructure initiatives that could be started up within 90 days of
receiving necessary funding:
Just three days after Dick Durbin relaunched his effort
to let judges alter the terms of distressed mortgages in bankruptcy
cases, a coalition of activists rallied outside the senior Illinois senator’s
Chicago office to commend his efforts and push him to offer more
expansive assistance.
Organized by Chicago Jobs With Justice
(JWJ), a group of around 50 gathered to hear testimony from Antoinette
Chambers, a West Side resident facing eviction from her apartment
because her landlord is being foreclosed upon.
The coalition also delivered a letter to a Durbin staffer (right) calling on Congress to support his bankruptcy bill,
impose a freeze on all mortgage foreclosures, and pass a job-creating
stimulus package as outlined by the Institute for Policy Studies.
“This is a letter,” said James Thindwa, JWJ’s
executive director, “that we’re sending to Senator Durbin to thank him,
to acknowledge his good efforts, and to ask him to do more and push
other members of the U.S. Senate and the Congress at large to really
understand what an emergency this is.”
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