Illinois Democrats are demanding $41 billion from the federal government for coronavirus relief, including $10 billion for Illinois's cash-strapped and underfunded public pension plan. The most fiscally mismanaged state in the union that has criminally neglected funding its public pension fund for two decades wants Washington to pull its chestnuts out of the fire?
Certainly, states should get something. But what Illinois is asking for is shocking.
“I realize I’ve asked for a lot, but this is an unprecedented situation, and we face the reality that there likely will be additional, unanticipated costs that could result in future requests for assistance,” Harmon wrote on behalf of the state senate Democratic caucus.
Harmon’s federal wish list for the second phase of federal coronavirus relief includes $15 billion in block grant funding to shore up the state’s spending plans for this fiscal year and the next two.
The Oak Park Democrat also asked for $10 billion for the state’s desperately underfunded pension plans.
A block grant is a blank check. Harmon wants the taxpayer to put $15 billion in the hands of state Democrats to spend as they wish?
Illinois Republicans were, quite rightly, beside themselves, accusing Democrats in a tweet of “brazenly using a global pandemic as an excuse to ask the [federal government] to bail them out of the fiscal disaster they manufactured over the last two decades.” And that goes double for the pension fund. The state was going to have to ask the federal government for a pension bailout even before the pandemic. Now, they have an excuse.
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