Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly intentionally underfunded a program to help poor families pay for daycare so that it would run out of money in January and help them make the case for higher taxes. They don't care about poor people. They are merely pawns used to get them more power.
According to a memo from the current governor's office, the Quinn administration instructed the agency to operate as though it was fully funded, "despite knowing full well that doing so would create a funding shortfall in the second half of the fiscal year." The speculation is that Quinn expected to win re-election and pass a tax increase.
Democrats hold struggling moms hostage in day care dilemma - Chicago Tribune
I have read the essay regarding the $300 million budget shortfall that is hurting the Illinois Child Care Assistance Program. The article’s author, Diana Sroka Rickert, accuses the Democratic members of the Illinois Senate of holding struggling mothers hostage regarding this dilemma.
Although I trust no politician of any political party blindly, I question the sincerity expressed in her (and, presumably, the Illinois Policy Institute’s) conclusion to this essay: “It is disgraceful how the politicians who claim to care about these women — who are trotting them out in public hearings to share their plight with all the world — are the ones who put them in this position in the first place. These mothers deserve better than to be pawns on their political chessboard.”
If one does any amount of research regarding the Illinois Policy Institute, it becomes apparent that it is a right-wing think tank that promotes: free-market principles of allowing corporations to operate with as few regulations as possible, otherwise known as laissez-faire capitalism; decreases in income taxes, particularly on the super rich; the vilification of labor unions so as to successfully advocate for the starving-the-beast tactic most commonly referred to as “right to work”; and charter schools.
It appears her essay does more to lay blame than to suggest solutions. If Ms. Rickert, the Illinois Policy Institute and/or other right-wing leaning organizations truly cared about the sufferings of working class and working poor mothers in this state, they would advocate for social and economic policies that due more to help than hurt us.
For instance, she would advocate for the generation of more revenue into the state’s coffers via the reinstatement of the 5% individual income tax rate, as well as the voter-approved ballot measure advising the Illinois legislature to raise taxes on incomes greater than $1 million to provide additional revenue to schools. Instead, her essay mentions in passing that “many are pointing to this situation as evidence that Illinois should have higher taxes.” She also appears to ridicule taxation by stating that Illinois taxpayers “give our
elected officials approximately $36 billion…” and “Illinois politicians refuse to live within
their means.” Perhaps, she and the Illinois Policy Institute disagree with the famous quote from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Wendell Holmes, Jr.: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” We pay taxes to the state of Illinois so that our state can continue to function for all of its residents. This is
our investment in the infrastructure of our state. Our elected officials are tasked with properly managing these funds on the taxpayers’ behalf. Taxes are
our monies meant to equally benefit the human residents of this state. That’s why we become upset when it’s been found that these funds have been mismanaged, abused or evaded.
If she, Governor Bruce Rauner, the Illinois legislators and others truly care about the struggles of Illinois mothers, they would cause the immediate cessation by businesses in this state of the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign nations whose human laborers are not nearly as well protected as our own. Instead, they promote the apparently anti-middle-class policies of a governor who earned some of his millions of dollars in the job outsourcing industry.
If Ms. Rickert’s expressed sympathies are sincere, she should support our fight to raise the minimum wage to a level that enables all working mothers to afford to live above the line of poverty on only one job. That way working mothers, both married and single, could spend more time with their children than with employers who exploit the economic disparities created by austerity-prone trickle-down economics and feckless free-trade agreements. Additionally, this would help to reduce the number of families dependent upon the Child Care Assistance Program and other forms of government assistance in the first place. In other words, raising the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour would reduce spending, a concern alluded to in Ms. Rickert’s essay.
Will Ms. Rickert call for the introduction of legislation that would ensure that women are paid equally when working in the same or similar occupations that are filled by men? What’s her opinion about passing legislation that forces employers to give maternity/paternity leave that is separate from earned vacation days?
Does she include the “struggling mothers” amongst state employees whose collective bargaining rights are under attack by a governor who reportedly made more than $25,000.00 per hour last year, but thinks it should take seven years to raise the state’s minimum hourly wage from $8.25 to $10?
Where do she and the Illinois Policy Institute stand on the fight to make college education affordable for us Illinois women as mothers of college-bound children and as students ourselves? Does she support the call for two years of free community college education? Is she aware that annual tuition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used to be as low as $170 (1966-1967) for state residents? As someone who appears to advocate spending within one’s means, perhaps Ms. Rickert would agree that eliminating the need for student loans would definitely help Illinois moms.
Whatever the true nature of her stance regarding “struggling mothers”, I know that I, for one, would greatly appreciate it if she and the Illinois Policy Institute would stop their own efforts of treating these women and the rest of us Illinois residents as “pawns on their political chessboard.”
