Why Wisconsin won't become Illinois

The Washington Examiner reports:

This month, Moody's Investors Service reported that Illinois has the worst public employee pension shortfall of any state — and by quite a large margin. The three-year average of Illinois' adjusted net pension liabilities now amount to 258.4 percent of revenues — second-worst is Connecticut at only at 200 percent. Illinois pension funds are only 40 percent funded and face a staggering shortfall of $187 billion, based on Moody's realistic assumptions about investment returns.

Gov. Pat Quinn, D-Ill., and Democrats in the state legislature passed an enormous $7 billion-per-year tax increase in 2011 that was supposed to help keep up with pension contributions without further borrowing. This year, they passed a law allowing Chicago to raise its city telephone tax by 56 percent (yes, they have a city telephone tax) in order to keep up with current city pension obligations.

Incredibly (or maybe not), these tax increases are not making a dent in the long-term problem.

The worst part is that over time, both political parties in Illinois have become so inured to the power the unions wield that everyone has become complicit in defending not only too-generous pensions (about 6,000 retired educators now get six-figure annual pensions), but also the very worst abuses of the pension system. Last year, for example, Republicans objected to rules that would have blocked suburban and downstate school districts from “spiking” teacher pay — a common abuse of the system that is helping drain it.

Barack Obama's Illinois.