EDWARDSVILLE – "Don't let it happen," State Senator Jason Plummer (R-Edwardsville) writes in an op-ed posted on FoxNews.com, "Federal dollars should not prop up Illinois' failed system."
Plummer criticizes Illinois Senate Democrats who wrote a letter asking for help to bail out the state's pension system in light of the COVID-19 crisis. The freshman Republican called the request "audacious."
He writes:
Americans broadly support federal relief for businesses and workers, but they don’t want to bail out failed business models and corporate corruption. So how would they feel about bailing out the governance failures of America’s most corrupt state?
Welcome to Illinois, America’s shrinking state, home to 1,000 public corruption convictions in the last 20 years. Our acquisitive state politicians want over $40 billion from other states in a brazen attempt to spread the Illinois model beyond our borders.
My Democratic state Senate colleagues garnered national attention with a letter containing this audacious request. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has separately requested billions in federal funds. The message from Illinois’ elected leaders is crystal clear: no humility, no regrets, no acknowledgment of failures, and no strings attached. American Taxpayers – bail us out!
Don’t let it happen. Federal dollars should not prop up Illinois’ failed system.
Sober-minded Illinoisans have long warned that the next economic wind would topple our financial house of cards. However, our leaders had other priorities. Pritzker took to the lectern for his 2020 State of the State address declaring Illinois strong and dismissing fiscal realists as “carnival barkers” and “doomsayers,” receiving thunderous approval from his allies. Now the entire nation knows we’re broke and these same politicians are pleading for a bailout.
The rest is HERE on FoxNews.com
