IL: Rasmussen: Quinn leading

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Considering the huge number of undecideds, as well as the polls being everywhere throughout this cycle, it's still a dead heat. Which is sad, because Quinn has a spectacular record of failure and Rauner isn't anything like the caricature Team Quinn has painted him as.

Hopefully Rauner can still pull it off, but this may be one of the last races called after the polls close.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Quinn isn't going to win this; Rauner is going to lose this. It's not a "mistake" or a "blunder" by the people of Illinois. They know what they want, and it isn't lower taxes on the rich, a lower minimum wage, gutted school funding, attacks on collective bargaining, or attacks on social programs.

So if protecting education funding, unions, and social programs are so important, why would they vote for Quinn??

And to stick it to the rich, you support raising taxes on everyone during bad economic times?

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Quinn isn't going to win this; Rauner is going to lose this. It's not a "mistake" or a "blunder" by the people of Illinois. They know what they want, and it isn't lower taxes on the rich, a lower minimum wage, gutted school funding, attacks on collective bargaining, or attacks on social programs.

So if protecting education funding, unions, and social programs are so important, why would they vote for Quinn??

And to stick it to the rich, you support raising taxes on everyone during bad economic times?

I don't really know what you're talking about. Quinn has been very strongly in support of education and social program funding. He signed pension reform that was far more moderate than what Rauner favors.

You do know that Quinn cut education spending by $600 million and child welfare spending by $85 million, right? And that he's closed 57 state facilities, including halfway houses, mental health centers, and disability centers? And that he wants to take inmates from partially-empty prisons and send them to already-overcrowded ones (instead of vice-versa?)? And that he approved budgets (such as the 2012 & 2013 budgets) that cut spending for infrastructure and environmental projects to cover the budget deficits? Rauner wants to increase education spending by $6 billion over the next few years, and restore spending on infrastructure and environmental programs.

And the pension reform being "moderate" is the problem. The liability was $83 billion in 2011 and is now $100 billion. It keeps growing and growing. The 2011 hike was specifically meant to take care of it, but it didn't. Though I don't like what Walker or Kasich did to unions, this is one case where the public sector unions are going to have to take some cuts. All Rauner really has proposed was letting workers keep what they've earned and moving everyone else to 401(k)s.

And either way, Quinn froze pay for low-level workers while higher-ups kept taking their big salaries, not to mention the patronage thing going on right now. Quinn may say he supports education/social programs and Rauner is an evil rich dude, but Quinn actually has a record that the D avatars on here would blast a Republican for actually doing. Even the unions give Quinn crap for freezing their salaries and making tiny cuts to the pensions.

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Why the hell would you support raising taxes on everyone? That's hundreds, if not thousands of dollars more you're taking out of the paychecks of everyone (including poor, working class, and middle class people) to fund soaring pensions for a few. If you want a progressive tax system, that's cool, I support that, but I don't get why you would want to make life even more expensive for people who would feel the most pain just because like 2 states around you have somewhat higher tax burdens. It doesn't make the tax code much more progressive at all. The rich will still be rich after the hike with their McMansions, Gold Coast flats, and BMWs, but for regular people who make less than $100K a year you've just taken more money out of their hands to throw at the pensions.

Quinn says he's fiscally responsible and wants "serious reform", only to deliver half-baked reforms that don't accomplish anything other than cutting needed programs to protect his dear unions. Rauner at least would have a Dem legislature to check him (and vice versa), so it's not like he can Walker the state. Yeah, Rauner needs to be more specific, but I don't see why the Forum Democrats are so blindly defending Quinn after being such a horrific Governor.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

How big of a budget gap do you want Illinois to have? Quinn's cuts were modest proposals to reduce the deficits we are running. Then you also oppose the tax increase? Where is all this money coming from? Rauner's pleas to increase spending are pure ploys for votes from Democrats. His education funding would be misallocated in favor of alternatives to public education and coupled with his conservative tax policies would wreak havoc on the budget.

Spending is a huge part of the problem here. It's increased 25.6% since 2009, while inflation over those 5 years totaled 9.1% for comparison. Yes, Illinois' tax codes are outdated and need to be reformed, and the Great Recession took a huge bite out of tax revenue, but you can't ignore the spending side of this. The 2015 budget passed by the legislature keeps increasing spending even though the tax hikes haven't been made permanent yet. If Quinn gets re-elected again, I wouldn't be surprised if an inverse "starve the beast" policy emerges: increase spending constantly to justify higher taxes.

And if we're talking education spending and other states, Indiana devotes far more of its budget to elementary, secondary, and higher education than Illinois does. Not all charter schools are crappy, for profit hellholes like the ones you hear about in the news, and not all public schools are sacred untouchable things that just need more money thrown at them to succeed. Education reform is a complex, case-by-case slog and Quinn has even endorsed charter schools, opening several himself.

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Of course it sounds empty to someone who identifies themselves as a young, rich, white, liberal elitist. Do you have a job? Do you and your family depend heavily on said job? If not, you probably don't know the burden of taxes while struggling economically. Surcharging is a piss-poor way to make the system progressive. Illinois FairTax would be a much better way by introducing steeper brackets while relieving the working class of a lot of their burden, the middle and upper class of some of their burden, while increasing the tax burden of those making more than $150K (so not just millionaires, it encompasses more people).

And what numbers are you using for for other states' tax burdens? The most common ranking of Illinois is 5th highest in the nation, with only large coastal states leading it.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

You're the one arguing for higher spending. You said Rauner would increase education and environmental spending. Where's the money? Quinn has implemented a dual approach - cutting where necessary and looking to realistically increase taxes. Rauner wants to do the opposite - hike spending but cut taxes. Who would be worse for the deficit?

Rauner wants to control the growth of spending, by cutting the amount that goes into the pension fund and what is spent on general government costs. Illinois is noted for its highly complex and overlapping local government districts (partially funded by the state) and high levels of corruption and waste, so there is a lot of room to make some cuts in those areas and consolidate services to make up for the comparatively smaller increases in spending on environmental and education spending. Rauner wants to slow the growth of spending and let the tax revenue side catch up via economic recovery.

I'll agree that Rauner still has to be specific, and I do have some reservations about him, but Quinn has shown himself to not care about effective spending cuts (he's still in favor of the Illiana Tollway, for example) and would rather tax his way out of it. Neither Rauner nor Quinn will be able to balance the budget quickly, but the difference is that Rauner is morel likely slow the growth of spending in relation to taxes, while Quinn has proven himself to cut badly needed funds to pile spending into more wasteful and corrupt programs, and just raise taxes over and over again.

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That wasn't a personal attack; I was asking you about your perspective, if you've actually know economic hardship, or how it has become more difficult to be middle class and seeing more of your money go to taxes while your income stagnates. You need to consider the effects of the tax increase on everyone.  You openly identified yourself as one:

Absolutely. Also elitist.

Again, the average tax burden in Illinois is 5th highest in the nation. To improve Illinois' economy, you don't suck up more consumer spending with taxes, the majority of which comes from people who are middle-income. Raise the top bracket as high as you want, I don't care, but hitting consumer spending derived from the middle class in a consumer-driven economy is a terrible idea. The millionaires surcharge would only affect ~700K households, while a more broad, progressive income tax would extend it to near 1.5 million households who could also afford it, thus raising more money from a broader base. And Rauner wants to adjust the state tax code to adjust to the fact that Illinois' manufacturing base has declined since the 1970s, and the sales tax is high but narrow. If the tax increase sunsets, it will actually sunset to 3.75%, which would be higher than Indiana's 3.4%.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

More empty rhetoric. Wouldn't we all like to cut "waste," but where is it? I haven't heard specifics beyond that buzzword. "General government costs," what does that mean? And our public workers deserve the reluctant and moderate cuts that have been implemented by the governor, not a war on public workers like the one waged one state north.

So is "empty rhetoric" your go-to for every criticism of government spending?

How about the report published by Illinois Policy that found $354 million in blatant, completely unjustifiable special interest money? If you whip out your handy dandy calculator, you'll notice that adds up to more than half of the $600 million in education cuts. For example, $3.5 million was allocated to Decatur for things such as buying and renovating a gift shop and funding for a private office building, the Board of Higher Education spent $2.3 million on 23 teachers in its "Grow Your Own Teacher" program and only 17 when on to actually teach in high-need schools; Illinois has borrowed over $650 million from its special funds to cover its main budget, but borrowing from those funds will cost insane amounts of money to pay back over the future. More than $870 million of the education fund was given out without the need-based criteria usually used. $124 million was given to wealthy school districts that didn't need it. $2 billion in state Medicaid spending could be eliminated via EMRs and other efficiency measures, and $800 million could be saved by asking former state employees to contribute to their healthcare plans. Switching new pensioners to 401(k)s would save an additional $2 billion. Quinn's anti-violence campaign paid two people several million to "advise" on how to reduce crime, yet one of them ended up murdering the other. $2.1 million went directly to the husband of Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown. On state payrolls, janitors, plumbers, admin assistants, and even barbers are paid twice the amount in salaries the average private sector person earns. Ending automatic pay raises other than inflation adjustments and instituting reasonable merit bonuses, reducing very-high paid employees (like >$100K) salaries, and eliminating excess employees through consolidation would save $300 million. Changing and capping retiree benefits by coordinating local pensions and the salaries they give their employees would save a combined $1.1 billion.

Dude, you live in Illinois. Turn on the news and almost daily there are reports of wasteful spending and new corruption charges. Do a basic Google search or something. Read a newspaper. This list goes on and on. If you don't see the waste, it's probably because you don't want to see it.

I just listed $8.1 billion in wasteful spending and potential reforms, most of them nit-picky. You can come up with billions more by going deeper, I'm sure. Like the federal budget, Illinois' budget would not be that hard to balance if we actually wanted it to be balanced.

And Rauner's not going to have a GOP legislature to go Scott Walker on unions. That's political reality. He will check the legislature, which will in turn, check him. If he really is hard-right, just turn vote in more Democrats in 2016 and turn him out in 2018. The Governor is not a dictator.

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With proper cuts, that gap can be closed when combined with the slowly recovering national and state economy. And do you mean the deficit is $4 billion? Because the Comptroller lists the state debt as $127 billion and the pension obligation is $99.6 billion (I think the $99.6 is part of the $127, but I'm not entirely sure)

The 2011 tax increase raised over $30 billion in the last 4 years (average of $7.5 billion/year), but he was only able to close the deficit by $6 billion? Major red flag that spending is also a problem. Ohio went from an $8 billion deficit to $1.5 billion surplus in the same time frame, so no, Quinn really doesn't care. His backing of more white elephant projects just proves it more. The next time another crisis comes along, he'll say we have to raise taxes, again, and break his promises, again, just like he has repeatedly over the past 5 years.

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The increase was in 2011. I never called the extension itself the increase? But for a family making $50,000 per year, the 5% rate will cost them a total of $2,500 in additional taxes as opposed to the 3% rate. Rauner will not roll it back entirely to 3% in one year, but has proposed letting the sunset occur and gradually rolling the 3.75% back to 3%. If he goes by 0.25% per year starting in 2016, said family would see a total tax cut of $750 as compared to a permanent 3.75% rate.

How is raising taxes on everyone still a good idea when you can implement a more progressive structure that raises money from households making more than $150,000/year and not put such a heavy burden on everyone below? The steeper progressive tax rates would raise more money than just a millionaires surcharge by broadening the tax base.