The ANSWER Coalition in Chicago has initiated Students and Teachers Fight Back!, a group of students, teachers, union members, activists and workers who are organizing to stop the budget cuts in Illinois. To find out more information or to get involved go to http//www.chicagoanswer.net.
 |
Illinois Governor Quinn’s 2011 budget proposal, announced on March 10, is a callous attack on students, teachers and all working people at a time of great economic distress for millions of people. The budget cuts in the proposal would represent a colossal loss in real wealth for the poorest while those on top get yet another free pass.
According to the state government, a $13 billion budget shortfall looms. Quinn is proposing budget cuts totaling $2 billion and massive borrowing. The cuts, which come on the heels of large cuts last year and decades of attacks on public services and jobs, will deepen the hardship and suffering of students and workers across the state.
Quinn proposes to eliminate $1.3 billion from Illinois public education funding, nearly 17 percent of funding for high schools and grammar schools, and 11 percent of education funding overall. This would mean that 17,000 teachers would lose their jobs, and over $500 less would be spent per child per year.
The education cuts will mean that eight public schools will be shuttered and that numerous school programs will be shut down, including special education, athletics and student transportation. Tuition at state universities and community colleges will continue to skyrocket. At the University of Illinois, Chicago tuition will increase by a staggering 20 percent.
While school funding is the largest area that Quinn proposes to cut, no human service is safe from the onslaught. Under the proposed budget, families would lose access to childcare and healthcare. With approximately $280 million in cuts to human services, the State would stop paying for childcare for a projected 6,000 children. Community mental health services would continue to shut down, and home-care for the elderly would be slashed. 70,000 disabled people will be cut off assistance.
The cuts will be severe for state workers. Their pensions would be slashed by about $300 million. They would be forced to take more furlough days, renegotiate their union contracts, and pay more for their health insurance.
The budget also cuts state-funded health care for the poorest communities. With about $325 million in cuts, retiree health care and prescription drug coverage would be gutted. Illinois would further decrease funding for cities and towns by $300 million.
The only solution proposed by Springfield to avoid some of these cuts is a tax increase on working Illinois residents. Quinn’s administration advocates a 33 percent increase in state income tax for individuals, raising the income tax from 3 percent to 4 percent. While the “one percent” increase sounds small, it would be devastating for many working families, especially the state’s poorest families that rely on state services. Even with this tax hike, however, Springfield does not promise to keep school funding and social services.
Additional revenues need to be found in order to save and expand services. But where should the money come from?
Why we say tax the rich
Workers in Illinois are already paying much more than their fair share in taxes and fees. On the other side, the super-rich and the corporations are not paying their share.
Heaping the burdens of the economic crisis onto the lives of working people by increasing taxes and fees and slashing services is criminal, especially while, during the economic crisis, the corporate executives and Wall Street billionaires continue to enjoy their mountains of undeserved wealth—wealth that is in reality not created by them, but by the combined efforts, blood and sweat of working people.
Increasing taxes on the super-rich and the corporations is not only a just solution to funding essential services, it is also a very practical solution. Increasing taxes on the rich and the corporations would, in fact, only decrease suffering. Making the bankers, billionaire investors and CEOs pay more for necessary public services is common sense: they have no right to hoard the country’s wealth while people cannot afford food, housing, education or health care.
The state of Illinois produces over $625 billion a year. The reported $13 billion budget shortfall is a fraction, only 2 percent, of the actual wealth produced.
We propose that the people struggle for the following increases in taxes on the rich in order to cover the so-called $13 billion budget gap:
1) A 10 percent income tax, with no loopholes or subsidies, for the top 50 corporations in Illinois for the years 2009 and 2010: $5 – $7 billion. According to information obtained on Forbes.com and the Illinois State Department of Revenue website, the top 50 corporations in Illinois made a combined $48 billion in profit in 2007. Total corporate income tax for Illinois the same year came to $2.2 billion. That’s well below the current 7.3 percent flat tax supposedly collected on corporate income, even if only the top 50 companies are counted. In the average year, monstrous capitalist companies like Boeing, Walgreens, Caterpillar, Sara Lee, Sears, Exelon and McDonalds short change the state tens-of-millions-of-dollars each. Between 2001 and 2003, Boeing made $5.64 billion in profit and paid -$41 million in taxes. That’s right: working people paid Boeing $41 million in tax refunds. In 2009, while hundreds of thousands were losing their homes, Chicago gave United Airlines $50 million to move its offices to the city. Illinois gave UPS $24 million to stay in the state.
2) A 20 percent income tax for the years of 2008, 2009 and 2010 on Illinois corporations that hide revenues in offshore accounts: $3 billion. According to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Illinois companies hide $5 billion a year in offshore tax havens.
3) Make the rich pay their share of taxes: at least $5.5 billion. In Illinois the top 1 percent, with an average income of $2 million a year, pay 4 percent of their income in personal taxes (income, sales and property taxes). The bottom 20 percent, who make less than $18,000 a year, pay 13 percent of their income in personal taxes. Those who make $18,000 to $36,000 pay 11 percent of their income in personal taxes. Even a modest increase of personal taxes for the rich would take care of any budget “problems” without measurably impacting the wealthy or the corporations. The $5.5 billion figure would result from a modest proposal to increase income taxes for millionaires to 7.5 percent with no exemptions, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
We demand that the corporations immediately open all of their books for a full accounting before a corporate tax commission run and staffed by working people, so that corporate income taxes can be accurately assessed and essential services for working people can be saved and expanded.
Public Services are a Right! Education, Equality, Health Care and Jobs are Rights!
Join the Struggle to Stop the Budget Cuts!
