 Illinois is America's biggest basket case: Over $150 billion in unfunded
retirement liabilities. The worst overall fiscal condition of any state. Two
governors and a raft of other public officials sent to prison. Corruption that
costs every citizen more than $1,300 a year.
Job growth that trails all surrounding states. The slow-motion liquidation of
Downstate's manufacturing economy. Over 300,000 more people fleeing the state
just since 2010.
The venal and bankrupt political class of both parties created this toxic mess.
Those who benefited served as enablers, including public employees, unions and
the big business interests who always seemed to cut a better side deal of
subsidies for themselves.
Enter Bruce Rauner… with a promise to shake up Springfield and start
fundamentally reforming the state.
While Rauner and everybody else knows that higher taxes are required to pay off
Illinois' Mount Everest of debt, he has refused to countenance more taxes
without reform first — reform that Democrats oppose.
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 One would think this would pressure the state's legacy Democratic
leadership, which presided over creating much of the current mess,
to get on board with reform.
Michael Madigan has all but ruled the state with an iron fist
since becoming speaker of the Illinois House in 1983. Virtually
every bad decision since happened with his approval.
But in some bizarre inversion, Rauner is the one under pressure to
fold and return to business-as-usual politics in Illinois.
Some, especially on the left, may strongly dislike Rauner's
proposals, but he's the only chance at reform Illinois has.
The choice isn't between Rauner and some imaginary progressive
utopia. It's between Rauner's reforms and more Madigan misrule.
That's an easy choice to make.
Illinois can't afford any more Madigan-Cullerton style business as
usual.
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