-By Warner Todd Huston
If this isn’t a reed-in-the-wind sort of move, I’m not sure what is? If you’ll recall a few weeks ago Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn was left trying to explain why he was giving his staffers big raises even as he was gallivanting about the state saying how we are out of money and that we’d need to cut the budget. Well this week he is cutting staffer’s pay giving them more furlough days.
After giving out raises, now Quinn is trying to save face from that tone deaf move and requiring his staffers to endure 24 furlough days this year instead of the previous 12 day cut.
And Quinn is now putting up a grand show of his seriousness on fiscal issues by hectoring every government office to make such cuts.
“Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures, and I thank our hardworking state employees for their dedication in getting Illinois back on track,” Quinn said in a statement. “Today, I am calling on all state employees – not just managers and policymakers, but the Illinois General Assembly, their staffs and union members as well – to join us in taking the necessary steps to further cut the state budget.”
While I most certainly support every state worker losing salary and benefits and having to suffer furlough days, the accidental governor’s sudden push for all this rings a bit hollow after his recent PR disaster.
Let’s hope, whether it is all just CYA or not, that Illinois government accedes to Quinn’s hectoring. Illinois government is bloated beyond measure and needs a scythe taken to it.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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