Millionaire’s
Tax Goes Down in Flames in State House
By Jim Vail
Special to Mychinews.com
The heart of the Chicago
Teachers Union fight with the city is over funding.
The CTU argues that the
city is “Broke on Purpose” because it refuses to make the bankers and
businesses pay. Instead, the mayor wants to make the people pay via cutting
teacher salaries, closing schools and eliminating educational programs.
So the teachers went out
on a one-day strike April 1st to focus part of the fight in in
Springfield to galvanize state lawmakers to enact progressive tax revenue that
would make the rich pay more.
That strategy suffered a
major defeat last week when a proposed constitutional amendment to levy an
additional tax on incomes over $1 million came up three votes short of passing
the Illinois House, according to Progressillinois.com.
The CTU endorsed House
Speaker Michael Madigan in his last election and have given him thousands of
dollars in political donations.
So it was the powerful speaker
who proposed to add a 3 percent surcharge on income over $1 million, which
would have raised some $1 billion for schools each year.
Madigan blamed the defeat
on the Republicans.
“For the second time in
less than a year, Republican legislators have rejected the wishes of their
constituents and opposed a measure requiring the top 1 percent to pay more to
help boost education funding in Illinois,” read a statement from Madigan posted
on the Progressillinois website.
The “millionaire’s tax”
suffered the same defeat last year by almost a similar vote count.
Most Americans favor a
tax on the rich that would raise significant revenue.
“Right now, the wealthy
pay too little,” Hillary Clinton said during a debate, according to the NY
Times. “And the middle class pays too much.”
There are cities in the
US that have passed a tax on the rich that have helped raise the money to pay
for education.
The Republicans have
always voted against taxing the rich.
The argument against
taxing the rich is that rich people will leave Illinois. This is the same
argument given for corporate tax breaks or public-subsidized stadiums that are
privately owned – if you don’t give me tax-payer money, I’ll leave.
It’s called blackmail,
and unfortunately, politicians who are financed by the rich succumb to it.
It’s hard to fathom that
back in the 1950s the wealthy were taxed at a 90% rate. And the country was the
strongest economy in the world.
Madigan did increase
state taxes on corporations, and of course, they threatened to leave the state.
Republican governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin openly courted them to his
“right to work” state which eliminated collective bargaining for unions and hit
the middle class hard.
But there was no mass
exodus of corporations leaving Illinois.
The CTU also proposed a
penny tax on stock trades that could raise several billion dollars. Mayor Rahm
Emanuel said the Chicago Board of Trade would simply leave the city. But New
York has a similar tax that raises billions of dollars, and no traders have
left the financial center as a result.
One of the greatest
problems in this country is that the income gap between the rich and poor is
growing at an alarming rate, and the middle class is vanishing.
The CTU is also proposing
a progressive tax in which the rich would pay more and the poor would pay less.
Currently, Illinois is one of only seven states that has a flat tax in which
everyone pays the same rate, a bigger burden on low-income workers.
The school strike action
was only one-day. A looming long teachers strike possibly this fall will
highlight the battle between who pays the state’s and city’s overdue bills –
the rich or the rest of us.
Stay tuned!
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