Toxic Government by Democrats: Chicago

[Geee]

Front Page Magazine:

The city of Chicago, Illinois has been led exclusively by Democratic mayors since 1931. Under the “progressive” policies of such notables as Richard J. Daley, Michael Bilandic, Jane Byrne, and Harold Washington, the city’s economic and social fabric decayed markedly during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. These trends were accompanied by a steep decline in Chicago’s population, which fell from 3.62 million in 1950 to 2.78 million by 1990.

 

 

Under Mayor Richard M. Daley (1989-2011), Chicago rebounded a bit in the 1990s when it added some 560,000 new jobs and gained more than 100,000 residents. But in the first decade of the 21st century, these successes faded. Fiscal mismanagement by the Daley administration began to manifest itself in Chicago’s economy, causing 7.1% of the city’s jobs to dry up and disappear—more than any other large metropolitan area.

Meanwhile, the city government was running an annual budget deficit of approximately $650 million. Contributing heavily to these shortfalls were ever-escalating expenditures on the lavish benefits of Chicago’s many public-sector union employees, whose pensions were, by mandate of the Illinois state constitution, permanently immune to cutbacks. By early 2012, each household in the city owed, on average, more than $63,000 in local government liabilities.