Bruce Rauner and his rocky road

By Jim Killebrew

[January 05, 2015]  On November 4, 2014 the era of the democrats in the Executive Mansion in Illinois ended with the election of Bruce Rauner who became the Governor-Elect. At this writing on January 4, 2015, two months exactly since his win, Illinoisans are looking toward the inauguration day on January 12, 2015. At least those who voted for the new Governor are looking forward. For over a decade the democrats have run the state in all the branches of government. From all accounts the next few months will be the start of significant change in Illinois.

Under the democrat rule the state has lost a governor to prison, continued the practice of underfunding the state pension plans, lost the credit rating for the state, continued to spend the state into unprecedented deficits, increased the citizens' personal income tax, raised the corporate tax to one of the highest in America, lost educational incentives in addition to stuffing the Teacher's Pension Plan with multiple IOU's, and created an economic climate that has produced governors from surrounding states to advertise for individuals and corporations to leave Illinois in favor of a more economic-friendly climate in their states. Consequently, there has been a business flight from Illinois to other states taking their jobs; resulting in taking their economic status and their stability with them.

The new governor has promised to turn around the economic dismal failures of the democrats by reversing many of the strangle-hold regulatory bindings that has cut off the increase of jobs and has caused the restriction of economic growth. The new governor has promised new funding for schools, a different approach to the pension plans, more competitive economic policies that will beckon back those who have left the state, and his promise to show more "compassion" to those who are in need. Of course, with his plans to create this kind of change he is going to have to keep his eyes open for those who are already built into the DNA of the state system that is geared toward rejecting almost anything he wants to do.

He may come out fighting from the one corner of the Executive Branch of State Government, but he will face the other corner of the Springfield ring with opponents like a fully-forced democrat House of Representatives continuing under the leadership of Michael Madigan, and the Senate side of the General Assembly that retained its majority of democrat senators, and both with a veto-proof majority. Behind that group, of course, are all the public unions that have already stated they will not tolerate the same kind of changes they observed in our neighbors to the North, Wisconsin. Perhaps even a stronger foe is the political machine that generally holds sway over elections, this one notwithstanding, in our largest city to the North, Chicago.

These potential foes possibly also include the Illinois democrats who continued to retain their power at the Federal level: Dick Durbin and Barack Obama. Combined with the others, it could be possible the force of federal persuasion could be brought to the ring as well. When people have been accustomed to receiving the benefits of what deficit spending has brought for over a decade, it might be a difficult proposition to give up any of the bacon.

Perhaps the new governor's sliver of light in his governing style is the cold, hard fact that rank-and-file citizens of Illinois really are fed up with the "business as usual" form of high taxation and deficit spending. If the new governor uses his "bully-pulpit" skillfully, and begins his administration with true transparency, with sound, logical taxation and spending plans, he may attract some of the opposition legislative members to actually move toward cooperation rather than being adversarial. Those few members might be willing to actually listen to the people they represent and work with the governor to straighten out this mess the State of Illinois has fallen victim to being economically last among all the states with the dismal practices of the last decade. At least we can hope he will have some cooperation.

[By JIM KILLEBREW]