The Best Things in Life are Free?

I grew up on the south side of Chicago; so I took notice last week when I saw that the residents of my old neighborhood vociferously protested against the influx of migrants that were being housed in what once was South Shore High School. The South Shore neighborhood is now largely African American, and it has many middle class residents. I sent the news story to my old grammar school buddies, and one of my best friends responded, noting how fear and prejudice are linked together regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. He also remarked how our ancestors (from Ireland) faced that same fear and prejudice. True enough – but I think there is more than that operating here, and that brings me to some related stories.

Illinois was the first state in the nation to extend health coverage to undocumented seniors. As reported by Politico, when it was first started in 2020, lawmakers estimated that its cost to run the program would approximate $4 million. Illinois legislators vastly expanded this initial program, so by the time Governor Pritzker introduced his budget in February of this year, he estimated that the cost to provide state-funded health insurance to adult immigrants who are in the country without legal permission would be $220 million.

Now, just three months later, that estimate has grown fivefold, swelling to $1.1 billion in 2024. You have to ask – how could Pritzker be so wrong in such a short period of time? The obvious reason is that there has been a dramatic growth in undocumented immigrant participation. We note that a recent report from the Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) reveals that the HFS FY24 estimate is for more than 108,400 additional eligible documented immigrants over original FY23 estimates. That number is sure to grow. Recent research by Rob Paral and Associate indicates that roughly 511,000 undocumented immigrants live in the state of Illinois, and they will increasingly respond to all the free programs offered by Illinois.

I don’t believe that the loud but peaceful protest in South Shore’s African American community is reflective of any inherent or systematic racism. Instead, I think that the protest is, at its root, largely economic. The best things in life may be free, but the important necessities of life like housing, education and food certainly cost a helluva lot of money. Chicago citizens know that several important state programs are still drastically underfunded, and citizens could greatly benefit from the $1.1 billion that will be directed instead to providing medical services to undocumented immigrants. For instance, the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability has reported that unfunded pension liabilities for Illinois’ five state-run pension funds – for state workers, university employees, judges, lawmakers and teachers outside Chicago – stands at $144 billion in 2020. That is the rosy scenario, and many financial analysts think that a more realistic number is twice that amount.

So how is Illinois going to pay for all of these nice, well-meaning programs? Tax the rich? Maybe, but many of Illinois’s rich citizens have already fled from what they perceive to be a high tax environment led by a largely corrupt state government. Illinois could always borrow more, but at what cost? According to Moody’s, one of the three major credit rating firms, Illinois’ credit rating is the worst in the country. In sum, what we are seeing in Illinois is a long-term trend of increasing debts, higher taxes and worsening retirement security for government workers.

Unfortunately, the United States of America is marching hand in hand with Illinois on the same road to insolvency. As readers can see on the front page of our blog, the US national debt is $31.8 Trillion and mounting! Although Republicans in the US House of Representatives made a small step in the right direction by forcing President Biden to compromise and reduce the growth of domestic discretionary spending, much more needs to be done. However, both Republicans and Democrats did not touch entitlement spending, and military spending was allowed to grow at a 3% pace. In our opinion, If we want to provide our children and grandchildren with a solid financial future, everything needs to be on the chopping block!

We’ll end where we started - with the very sad state of affairs in Illinois. It is a blue state, in that all important decision-making positions are and have been controlled by Democrats. Both the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois are sanctuary entities, and the new mayor and the governor continue to welcome undocumented immigrants and migrants. Well, they are going to get their wish. Migrant border crossings in fiscal year 2022 topped 2.76 million, breaking previous record by more than 1 million (according to Customs and Border Protection data), and the deluge has continued in 2023.

The Governor of Texas well knows that his state does not have the financial resources to house and feed the millions of poor migrants flooding into his state, so he is sending some of them elsewhere, including the 10,000 he has so far sent to the sanctuary city of Chicago. No doubt there will be more, and when they arrive, they will discover there is no place for them to live. Turn on the local TV, and you will see that the latest influx of migrants are now being housed in police stations, and yes, vacant high schools. A cynic might say that is good planning – Chicago is letting the criminals out of jail, so there is more than enough room for migrants in those empty jail cells!

Our point is that it is nice to roll out the red carpet and help other people, but Chicago and other big cities and states in this nation have too much debt and not enough income to pay for needed programs for our own citizenry, let alone all the other people in the world who want to live here. South Shore residents know that the free programs that Illinois offers to migrants aren’t really free, for someone has to pay for them. Hard choices lie ahead.