The Democratic Party Officials Have Ruined Illinois Financially ... Is This Where We're Headed for the Nation as a Whole?

To put it mildly, the U.S. has numerous difficult financial challenges ahead.

When discussing our economic and financial issues, it's not unusual for people to point to countries like Greece and Spain as examples of what could be our financial future unless we get our act together sometime soon.

But the fact is that we don't have to look at other countries for warning signs about our nation's future. We can look right here at home instead. The states of California, Illinois and New York, for examples. But we'll stay with Illinois herein.

Illinois is a state widely recognized as being in deep doo-doo financially. It's also a heavily Democratic and unionized state.

And depending on what we and our elected officials decide to do about our precarious financial situation, the U.S. government may very well head down the destructive path long traveled by Illinois. So let's look closer at what that means.

I Didn't Leave the Democrats: They Left Me is an editorial by Sheldon G. Adelson and reads in pertinent part as follows:

"So why did I leave the (Democratic) party?

My critics nowadays like to claim it's because I got wealthy or because I didn't want to pay taxes or because of some other conservative caricature. No, the truth is the Democratic Party has changed ....

Democrats seem to have moved away from the immigrant values of my old neighborhood—in particular, individual charity and neighborliness. After studying tax data from the IRS, the nonpartisan Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that states that vote  Republican are now far more generous to charities than those voting Democratic. In 2008, the seven least-generous states all voted for President Obama. . . .

Democrats would reply that taxation and government services are better vehicles for helping the underprivileged. And, yes, government certainly has its role. But when you look at states where Democrats have enjoyed years of one-party dominance—California, Illinois, New York—you find that their liberal policies simply don't deliver on their promises of social justice.

Take, for example, President Obama's adopted home state. In October, a nonpartisan study of Illinois's finances by the State Budget Crisis Task Force offered painful evidence that liberal Illinois is suffering from abject economic, demographic and social decline. With the worst credit rating in the country, and with the second-biggest public debt per capita, the Prairie State "has been doing back flips on a high wire, without a net," according to the report.

Political scientist Walter Russell Mead summed up the sad results of these findings at The American Interest: "Illinois politicians, including the present president of the United States, have wrecked one of the country's potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies—and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state's distress."

At times, it seems almost as if President Obama wants to impose the failed Illinois model on the whole country. Each year of his presidency has produced unsustainable deficits, and he takes no responsibility for his spending. Worse still, unemployment has become chronic, and many Americans have given up on looking for work.

Whenever President Obama deplores the wealthy ("fat-cat bankers," "millionaires and billionaires," "at a certain point you've made enough money," and so on), it tells me that he has failed to learn the economic lessons of Illinois, and that he still doesn't understand the vital role entrepreneurs play in creating jobs in our society.

As a person who has been able to rise from poverty to affluence, and who has created jobs and work benefits for tens of thousands of families, I feel obligated to speak up and support the American ideals I grew up with—charity, self-reliance, accountability. These are the age-old virtues that help make our communities prosperous. Yet, sadly, the Democratic Party no longer seems to value them as it once did. That's why I switched parties, and why I'm now giving amply to Republicans. . . .

The Democratic Party just isn't what it used to be."

Summing Up 

He's right about all of the above.

The government isn't charitable. People are.

The government doesn't create wealth. People do.

The government won't be able to solve our financial problems. We the People will have to do that.

And the government won't be able to fix our schools. We the People will have to do that, too. 

The government is nothing but a legal fiction. We the People are real. 

It takes real people to get things done.

Thanks. Bob.