The Illinois "Santa Claus and Scrooge" budget

tens of millions of your tax dollars to their favorite churches, tens of millions more to their favorite parochial schools and tens of millions to local government, such as municipalities, fire departments and park districts, even though there is no money to pay for it, even though the State Constitution prohibits grants of public funds to churches and parochial schools and even though it's the job of local government to raise their own money, rather than sticking everyone else in the State for their bills.

The reason that our legislators want to make those grants is that these churches, parochial schools and local governments have lots and lots of members.  The legislator shows up for a ceremony at the institution and hands over a symbolic check for the millions of dollars to the heads of the organization, to the applause of dozens or hundreds of the institution's members.  Then, at the next election, everybody who is a member of that organization, and all of their family members, vote to re-elect the legislator for the undeserved largesse to their organization.

What the legislator never says is that, what he is really doing is engaging in a cost shifting scam.  The legislator is shifting the cost from the members of the organization to the rest of us taxpayers, who have no obligation to that organization and who receive no benefit from that organization.

Our taxes go up, to foot the bill for the services that the organization provides to its members, rather than having the members of that organization raise revenue from amongst themselves.

They get the benefits.  We get the bills in the form of higher taxes.

The legislator then gets re-elected by getting votes from those who were unjustly enriched at our expense.

That's why the legislators do it.  It's just another form of vote buying.  Raising our taxes to play Santa Claus with favored constituencies, so that the members of those groups will vote to re-elect the legislator so that the legislator will continue to give those groups benefits that they don't have to pay for, because we are getting stuck with their bills.

If you wonder why our taxes are so high, it's not because we aren't paying enough to support public services.  Our taxes are excessively high because we are getting stuck with bills that are not our responsibility, so that targeted, favored groups of "plus voters" will vote to re-elect certain legislators because the members of the group were unjustly enriched at our expense.

That's how it works in Springfield.  Now you know.