Tony Rubolotta

The Illinois GOP: Monkey See, Monkey Do
May 30, 2009

I recently received an e-mail from the Illinois House Republican Caucus with the headline "Getting Illinois Back on Track.” The main talking points of the article are that Illinois Republicans are creating jobs and improving our schools and colleges. The "whys” are because Illinois has an unemployment rate of 9.4%, thousands of miles of roads and thousands of bridges that need repair and inadequate or burdensome property taxes to fund necessary school repairs and construction. The "how” is a claimed 450,000 new, good paying jobs created by a government expenditure of $29 billion. I had to recheck the article to make sure it wasn’t from the Illinois House Democrats.

Before probing the "whys” and "how” of this legislation, the myth of government created jobs should be exposed for what it is and why it fails to correct a genuine economic problem. Government jobs are funded by tax money taken from one group of people and given to another. That temporarily reduces unemployment but also reduces the income of the people currently producing, people who may have created real jobs if that money wasn’t taken from them. Furthermore, government created jobs last only as long as the supply of tax money to pay them is replenished. This does not create new wealth but only changes the spending pattern of existing wealth.

A simple thought experiment bears this out. If you earn and spend $100 per week, certain businesses you patronize receive that as income. If you give $30 of that to your children to spend as they please, they may patronize other businesses, but the businesses you patronized lose $30 income. While the businesses your children patronize may hire new employees, the ones you patronized will shed employees. The net gain in jobs is zero. No wealth is built.

The 9.4% unemployment rate in Illinois is a symptom of wealth destruction by high taxes, political corruption, fascist government regulation and poor business management practices, often required to satisfy bureaucrats and pressure groups. Companies did not curtail operations or leave Illinois or go bankrupt because government failed to create jobs. Theoretically, government created jobs could reduce the unemployment rate to zero, but only by increasing taxes that would destroy more wealth producing jobs. We could all be employed and poor at the same time. Just let government handle it and live happily with the illusion that zero unemployment means we are prosperous.

As to the merit of the Republican spending program, I have a few questions, such as what happened to all the gasoline taxes allegedly levied to maintain our roads and bridges? Once roads, bridges and schools are repaired, does the need for maintenance suddenly disappear or will it take $29 billion each and every year thereafter to maintain them? Where are the programs to eliminate waste, corruption, vote-buying, excessive regulation, wealth destruction and big government in general? Where is the program that allows the economy to decide how to grow by letting the job creators keep more job creating wealth?

Education is in shambles because the Illinois Education Association has extorted exorbitant wages, benefits, pension plans and extra jobs from politicians seeking their support and contributions. Property owners have been gutted with out of control property taxes to pay union demands acquiesced to by feckless political leaders and school boards. The IEA and politicians aligned with them hide behind children to pillage tax funds to satisfy their own greed and lust for power. If school budgets were short changed for building and facility maintenance, it was a political decision to postpone the day of reckoning and pay the high cost of placating the IEA. Creating jobs now merely provides cover for the consequences of IEA greed in the past.

Illinois Republicans have seen Illinois Democrats get away with phony job creation schemes that have brought the state to this sad point in its history. It’s hard to blame them for trying the same tactics, but blame them I do. They have chosen an expedient path that requires no leadership, no courage and no principles to follow.

Treating a cancer patient with pain medication may alleviate a symptom of the disease, but it doesn’t cure the disease. Treating the symptom can mask the severity of the underlying cause and give the appearance that treatment isn’t necessary. Government created jobs treat the symptom, high unemployment, but neglect the cause, wealth destruction. Government created jobs may actually contribute to wealth destruction. The patient is led to believe he is better but deteriorates and dies nonetheless.

I can’t support the Republican plan because it is the same failed plan Democrats foist on the public. It’s a cowards plan to make people feel good while they are being eaten alive rather than confront them with the facts about the disease that is killing them. Had they taken their case to the public that high taxes, irresponsible spending and big government are killing the jobs that create wealth, I could stand with them, but they haven’t and I won’t.

Link:
www.ilhousegop.org/2009/05/26/getting-illinois-back-on-track/