DC: Illinois is on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first state to carry a “junk” bond rating, as Springfield’s unprecedented budget impasse stretches into its third year.
Ratings agency S&P Global recently warned Illinois that it will likely lose its investment-grade rating if Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and state Democrats can’t scrape together a spending plan by midnight Friday. Illinois has been operating without a budget since 2015, accumulating $6 billion in additional debt over the past year alone, reports Bloomberg.
A junk rating would exacerbate Illinois’ enormous debt problem, which is already one of the worst of any state after decades of fiscal mismanagement.
SNIP: How long have we been hearing about this? Pull the trigger.
REAL
JUNK
Double EBT benefits! That should fix it.
Hard to believe there’s a state more screwed up than California.
Madigan’s answer? Approve a spending bill and worry about the revenue later. This for a state that runs negative 6 billion dollars a year and is losing net population. The state and municipalities are siphoning off pension contributions, and the state is being sued for not paying medical providers. Forget playing the Illinois lottery – they aren’t paying that either.
Rauner wants reform, Madigan wants business as usual. Although business as usual got the state into this mess in the first place.
Overspending, raiding pension and road funds, anti-business regulations, outrageous workers comp laws, High taxes, waste and corruption all in the name of democrat power and control.
And Illinois is only the third most corrupt state, they’re movin’ on up, thanks to Madigan and the Chicago block of legislators.
Two differences between Illinois (well, now) and California:
Illinois has a Republican governor, although only recently, and a Dem legislature. They will never be able to come up with a budget that will pass. CA, on the other hand, will much more easily pass a budget, albeit a horrendous one.
Second is that CA has Silicon Valley, is a vacation and living destination, and therefore has a lot more revenue to play with. But that just means insolvency will take a few years longer.
Don’t the Democrat politicians in Illinois have any shame? Apparently not.
@Bad Brad: I lived in both states for a considerable period of time. Illinois is more corrupt than California, has no beaches or mountains, and the weather doesn’t compare to California. Illinois is also losing population, and the population it is losing are productive individuals.
But if it makes you feel better, it is harder to fuck up California than Illinois, but Sacramento is hell bent on doing just that.
Wyatt
You know one of the reasons I haven’t bailed out of here is I love fishing the California Delta. And I’ll be damned if Jerry doesn’t have a plan to fuck that up too.
Bad Brad: California has some of the most natural beauty in the US. I left for reasons having nothing to do with politics, although it was becoming more and more frustrating living there.
This condition stems from years of a low grade fever, The end result is diarrhea of the treasury. Running out of other people’s money to spend.
Mr. Anth Ropy – A true democRAT is born without shame glands.
Becoming a democRAT later in life requires the surgical removal of them to become a TransRAT.
Not one damn dime from the feds. That will only delay the inevitable. The only way Illinois will ever recover is if they crash and burn. NOTHING else will wake up hard core, life long, democrat voters. Crash. Bankruptcy. Start over. They all believe it’s possible to spend their way out of bankruptcy and that they’ll get 49 other states to bail them out. Fat chance. P.S. Possible my math is impaired. Obama said he’d been to 57 states, had two more to go to, and they would not let him go to Hawaii. So if we use my math, 49 states would have to bail out Illinois. If you use Obama’s math, 59 other states would be asked to bail out the state.
Good thing there’s no serious social problems in Illinois, like, say, 4000 kids getting shot in South Chicago every year, cause then Illinois would really be f#cked
LET OBAMACARE FAIL under it’s own weight. Why are Republicans trying to save this?
Let democrat detroit FAIL,and democrat chicago FAIL. Why bother? They deserve to reap their punishments. How do they learn otherwise if Republicans get their fingers in it, then set themselves up to take the blame for the disaster.
Madigan said today that people need to be reasonable, meaning do what he says
Illinois would be a prosperous red state if not for the teeming masses in Cook County. They’ve elected democrats for decades who have bled the rest if the state dry. The leftists up there blame Gov. Rauner. Really, they do, and I think they are dumd enough to believe it. I’ve said for a long time that there is a special sort of stupidity that permeates most of the city, and anyone who’s been there knows what I’m talking about. It’s unfortunate they’ve taken the rest of the state down with them.
Ill in noise, yep, they named it right.
Q: What fool will lend money that will not get repaid?
A: Anyone holding a state of Illinois, Cook County, or Chicago bond.
How can they expect the people who caused the problem to solve the problem?