Just when it sometimes looks like all major mainstream media are in the bag for the Democrats in every instance, we are reminded of the adage that “every” and “never” are usually not accurate terms. The editorial board of The Chicago Tribune proved that in spades on Friday.
The not down the line conservative paper went after Democrat state Senate Leader Don Harmon with a vengeance on the Democrat plan to use coronavirus relief bill funds to get the state out of a massive and self-induced budget hole.
The Trib: “Let’s stipulate that Don Harmon, rookie president of the Illinois Senate, laid a rotten egg with his recent letter asking members of Congress to give Illinois a $40.6 billion bequest. Assorted politicians and pundits have scorned Harmon’s inclusion of a $10 billion pension bailout, as if a sudden pandemic created a pension crisis that, in fact, Harmon and his fellow Springfield lawmakers spent decades creating. We called Harmon’s request shameless and dishonest. His ‘ask’ was roundly criticized and, we would bet, part of the reason Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the idea of state bailouts in a recent radio interview…taxpayers across the country should not be responsible for Illinois’ financial mismanagement and particularly its unfunded pension liabilities.”
The paper continued, “It also helped expose Illinois Democrats’ agenda for 2020. While asking for a federal bailout, they have shown no movement toward cutting spending or removing from the November ballot a constitutional amendment that eventually will mean higher income taxes for millions of Illinois taxpayers… Pritzker [hard left governor of Illinois] should be re-examining expenses and payroll and weighing furloughs for state workers.”
The Tribune concluded, “He should be negotiating with the state’s labor unions to pull back, or at least delay, pay increases that during a pandemic of mass unemployment are scheduled to ship hundreds of millions of dollars in raises to workers who largely are staying home. Instead, there continues to be no appetite for reducing spending. Only asking for more money from taxpayers […] The coronavirus will be the reason, we expect, Pritzker will make an even harder push for his graduated income tax. Revenue losses have been deep and painful.”
The Tribune‘s editorial board also wrote on Sunday, “What is beyond galling is using the coronavirus as an excuse. Even by this state’s low standards, asking federal taxpayers from California to North Carolina, from North Dakota to Texas —farmers, small business owners, teachers, nurses, bus drivers, bartenders— to help dig Illinois out of its pre-coronavirus, self-inflicted, financial hellhole is astonishingly brazen.”
Thank you, Chicago Tribune. It is a sad fact not many other members of the mainstream media will follow their wise editorial example.
This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on April 27, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette [1] and is used by permission.
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