IL: Rasmussen: Quinn leading

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Bruce Rauner? More like Bruce GONER!

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More empty rhetoric. Wouldn't we all like to cut "waste," but where is it? I haven't heard specifics beyond that buzzword. "General government costs," what does that mean? And our public workers deserve the reluctant and moderate cuts that have been implemented by the governor, not a war on public workers like the one waged one state north.

So is "empty rhetoric" your go-to for every criticism of government spending?

How about the report published by Illinois Policy that found $354 million in blatant, completely unjustifiable special interest money? If you whip out your handy dandy calculator, you'll notice that adds up to more than half of the $600 million in education cuts. For example, $3.5 million was allocated to Decatur for things such as buying and renovating a gift shop and funding for a private office building, the Board of Higher Education spent $2.3 million on 23 teachers in its "Grow Your Own Teacher" program and only 17 when on to actually teach in high-need schools; Illinois has borrowed over $650 million from its special funds to cover its main budget, but borrowing from those funds will cost insane amounts of money to pay back over the future. More than $870 million of the education fund was given out without the need-based criteria usually used. $124 million was given to wealthy school districts that didn't need it. $2 billion in state Medicaid spending could be eliminated via EMRs and other efficiency measures, and $800 million could be saved by asking former state employees to contribute to their healthcare plans. Switching new pensioners to 401(k)s would save an additional $2 billion. Quinn's anti-violence campaign paid two people several million to "advise" on how to reduce crime, yet one of them ended up murdering the other. $2.1 million went directly to the husband of Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown. On state payrolls, janitors, plumbers, admin assistants, and even barbers are paid twice the amount in salaries the average private sector person earns. Ending automatic pay raises other than inflation adjustments and instituting reasonable merit bonuses, reducing very-high paid employees (like >$100K) salaries, and eliminating excess employees through consolidation would save $300 million. Changing and capping retiree benefits by coordinating local pensions and the salaries they give their employees would save a combined $1.1 billion.

Dude, you live in Illinois. Turn on the news and almost daily there are reports of wasteful spending and new corruption charges. Do a basic Google search or something. Read a newspaper. This list goes on and on. If you don't see the waste, it's probably because you don't want to see it.

I just listed $8.1 billion in wasteful spending and potential reforms, most of them nit-picky. You can come up with billions more by going deeper, I'm sure. Like the federal budget, Illinois' budget would not be that hard to balance if we actually wanted it to be balanced.

And Rauner's not going to have a GOP legislature to go Scott Walker on unions. That's political reality. He will check the legislature, which will in turn, check him. If he really is hard-right, just turn vote in more Democrats in 2016 and turn him out in 2018. The Governor is not a dictator.

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With proper cuts, that gap can be closed when combined with the slowly recovering national and state economy. And do you mean the deficit is $4 billion? Because the Comptroller lists the state debt as $127 billion and the pension obligation is $99.6 billion (I think the $99.6 is part of the $127, but I'm not entirely sure)

The 2011 tax increase raised over $30 billion in the last 4 years (average of $7.5 billion/year), but he was only able to close the deficit by $6 billion? Major red flag that spending is also a problem.

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The increase was in 2011. I never called the extension itself the increase? But for a family making $50,000 per year, the 5% rate will cost them a total of $2,500 in taxes as opposed to the 3% rate. Rauner will not roll it back entirely to 3% in one year, but has proposed letting the sunset occur and gradually rolling the 3.75% back to 3%. If he goes by 0.25% per year starting in 2016, said family would see a total tax cut of $750 as compared to a permanent 3.75% rate.

How is raising taxes on everyone still a good idea when you can implement a more progressive structure that raises money from households making more than $150,000/year and not put such a heavy burden on everyone below? The steeper progressive tax rates would raise more money than just a millionaires surcharge by broadening the tax base. 

Aren't you in high school? You don't actually care about tax extensions, tax breaks, tax cuts or "wasteful spending".