McDermed embraces GOP’s responsibility to protect taxpayers from Democrats’ ‘cruel lie’

Illinois state Rep. Margo McDermed (R-Mokena) insists the next proposal she hears calling for cuts in spending will be the first she’s heard from lawmakers in her five years in Springfield.

“The problem isn’t revenue, it’s that we are spending more and more with no restraint,” McDermed told the Will County Gazette. “Until we get to the point where we’re willing to cut, we can never increase taxes enough to fill the hole.”

In the meantime, McDermed laments, Democrats have turned to a strategy of doing whatever it takes to get the kinds of policies they want. The latest example comes in the form of the so-called ‘fair tax,’ or graduated income tax, now being pushed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker as a way forward in resolving the state’s ongoing financial crisis.

While Pritzker and company have billed the plan as a way to reduce property taxes, address the state’s pension crisis and provide more funding for schools and other programs, a detailed analysis by government watchdog website Wirepoints ridicules it as just another “doomed effort” that will needlessly cost taxpayers more of their hard-earned money while further feeding the growing mass exodus from the state.

At the same time, McDermed blasts the trickery as just more of the same kinds of deceitful policies that have put the state in such a rut.

“This has nothing to do with pension systems and is only a way to get more money from frustrated taxpayers,” she said. “The money proposed in the budget does not cover the rate of spend, so by the time the constitution amendment needed for this passed it would not be sufficient. The whole thing is just a cruel lie.”

Meanwhile, critics wonder why so many lawmakers seem on board with the idea of going through the trouble of a constitutional amendment fight when the revenue generated from the new tax wouldn’t be enough to plug the hole caused by pension debt alone. Wirepoints estimates that the state’s “true hole” could be as much as six times higher than the $3.2 billion offered as the official number by Pritzker and his supporters.

“My observation of Democrats in the Illinois House is that they have no idea how economics work,” McDermed added. “They are only concerned with creating programs for every problem imaginable. Cutting anything is not in their vocabulary. They somehow think wishing will make it so. We’re going to be the first state in history to create all these bad policies and magically be able to create money to cover them all.”

In the midst of such troubling times, McDermed said the role she and her Republican colleagues play is crucial.

“In the General Assembly, we are a super-minority and we don’t have enough Republicans to stop this initiative from getting on the ballot,” she said. “But what we can do is stand tall and repeat, over and over, what this will do to taxpayers, which will open the floodgates for Democrats to increase taxes at will.”