Whats really sad is that I think Illinois still has the most underfunded pension plan in the nation. We borrowed Billions in 2003 to try to address this and the State just spent it elsewhere, thanks mostly to Blago. So not only do we owe the original debt but now it includes the money we borrowed and spent. Only in Illinois.

Oh don't worry Quinn will raise our taxes. More businesses and people will leave the state. They will raise taxes again.

Like I said look at Michigan and Ohio if you want to see Illinois's future. I told my kids when they graduate from college don't come back here because there is no future here. Also we'll be packing up and leaving ourselves.

Anyone who bought a house here in the last couple of years is totally screwed.

But you're still not acknowledging the righteousness of this most recent - apparently, just last week - contribution to the "most underfunded pension plan in the nation".

Hey, a journey of $80 billion in underfunding has to start somewhere. $2.65 billion is a start, as the U of I goes shorted by hundreds of millions, along with $1 billion overall owed to schools statewide, countless other bills going unpaid.

And it's all going on Ill-Annoy's nearly maxed-out MasterCard.

Priceless.

Not sure what you're saying. That money likely just covers pension payments due. e.g. retired U of I professors get their $ before working professors. Nothing righteous about it. Change that system and U of I will become a matchbook correspondence school faster than you can say Cham..wow.

Yeah, even the U of I retired dude who collects $379,000 per year as a pension - just a few thou short of what Barack Obama makes as a salary.

Not to worry though, with the automatic annual 4% COLA increases [CPI was 0.1% - one-tenth of one percent - in 2009], he'll soon be at the $400,000 mark.

Remember its for the Children or young adults in this case.

In addition to underfunding its generous pension program so that now its 80B underfunded .

Illinois ranks 48th in job creation, it has lost over 367,000 jobs in the last decade while the rest of the country has added over a million.

We have one of the highest personal bankruptcies of any state. We have as a proportion of our budget the highest deficit. And the list goes on.

Even raising taxes will not help all that much.
Raising income taxes to 4.5 percent will bring in roughly another 4B but our budget is 13B out of whack. And do you honestly think our politicians will take that new money and spend it wisely. No. Look at Quinn he got Video poker and spent it on new roads for his pals in the construction industry and the unions.

The time to bail on this state is now. Do you want to be like those people in Detroit, stuck.
Unable to find a job, unable to sell their homes because no one else can find a job either.

Illinois is heading right toward that.

Raising tax rates seldom brings in more tax revenue. I can't think of why it would in IL. Higher taxes make businesses and people want to leave. Look at CA and NY as a couple of examples.