Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Pitches High Sales Tax With Rolling Stones Song

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich pitched even higher sales taxes with a Rolling Stones song:

The Rolling Stones made famous a simple lesson that all of us are taught early on: You can't always get what you want. And as the song goes on to say, if you try sometimes, you get what you need. But sometimes to get what you need, you need to compromise.

That truth was in the front of my mind last week when I said I would work with the transit funding bill sent to me by Illinois lawmakers. This was not the transit funding bill I preferred. I negotiated and supported alternative bills over the course of the last seven months that did not include tax increases. I said for many weeks that I opposed raising the sales tax to bail out transit. I urged lawmakers to send me a version of the CTA bailout legislation that did not include a tax increase, and I would sign it immediately.

In the end, the only bill the legislature was able to agree on was a bill that relies in part on a 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent increase in the sales tax. With the clock ticking down to a "transit doomsday" that could mean severe service cuts, fare hikes and hundreds of layoffs, I compromised and said I would accept the bill if lawmakers would support one simple improvement that minimizes the impact of the sales tax increase on senior citizens.

Rod Blagojevich forgot that the Rolling Stones became tax exiles after the British instituted some rather high taxes.No word yet from Blagojevich's life long friend Dan Stefanski on this one.