Illinois lawmakers started off their new term by giving themselves a pay raise on Monday. The base pay for legislators was raised 18% to $85,000 per year. The base pay for lawmakers in the state of Illinois for the last two years was at $72,000 per year.
Notice that they gave themselves a raise first for these two years instead of giving themselves a raise after improving the economy throughout the state of Illinois this year and next year. Here is the reason as to why lawmakers in the Land of Lincoln gave themselves a raise without doing any work yet for this term. This reasoning comes from a quote by current Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
"While I know people are willing to take a discounted salary off of what they might get in the private sector to come to a public service, you really have to be somewhat competitive. People are putting their kids through college, or they're paying their mortgage or their rent. You can't ask people to take 50% of what they were taking in the private sector."
The claim that Governor Pritzker makes in this quote is that Illinois senators and Illinois representatives deserve more money because they chose to become lawmakers while leaving occupations in which they were making six figures.
This type of logic explains why Illinois is ranked last out of the 50 US states in regards to fiscal stability. If they were so concerned about losing so much money from leaving their private sector job, then they should have stayed at that private sector job.
Comments / 21