I don’t know whether or not the legislative Democratic
leadership would’ve allowed a vote, but it is puzzling to me that the people
behind the extension of the state’s Invest in Kids Act program didn’t at least
try to run a bill that would’ve wound the program down over a period of years.
Continuing to allow income-tax credits for donations to
private school scholarship funds for kids who were already enrolled in the
program would’ve protected those individual children from being kicked out of
the schools over an inability to pay. Legislation like that would’ve given both
sides a veto session win, and kept the program on life support so that a future
General Assembly might decide to restart it down the road.
More than a few people were pushing behind the scenes for
a wind-down bill. The bill to extend the program for five more years didn’t
have enough votes to pass in the spring, when it needed 60 in the House and 30
in the Senate. Those constitutional requirements jumped to 71 and 36,
respectively, after May 31. A wind-down compromise seemed prudent.
And yet, the people who were so forcefully demanding that
the General Assembly extend the program for another five years made no overt
moves to protect scholarships for the 9,600 existing scholarship recipients,
hundreds of whom were bussed to Springfield to shout slogans in the Statehouse
halls.
Too many proponents of keeping the program alive seemed
more interested in battling with teachers’ unions than finding a way to the
bargaining table. But those teachers’ unions, along with other labor groups,
are now being quietly courted by Republicans because the party has lost so many
wealthy benefactors like Bruce Rauner and Ken Griffin, who both exiled
themselves to southern Florida. Other longtime top Republican contributors have
either passed away or retired and lost interest in Illinois politics. They need
money to compete, plain and simple.
A compromise (HB4194) floated by a small handful of House
Democrats on the first day of a two-week veto session attracted a total of just
four Democratic sponsors. The bill, which specifically required more
scholarships to poor children, mainly served to highlight the problems with the
existing statute, particularly that not nearly enough poor and minority kids
have been receiving the scholarships as proponents had insinuated. The bill
never moved an inch.
The House’s new bill also allowed Senate Democrats to
point the finger away from themselves, telling everyone that they wanted to
wait and see what happened to the bill in the other chamber before committing
publicly to a vote either way in the Senate.
House Republican Leader Tony McCombie claimed at one
point that the bill had, tops, 57 “Yes” votes in her chamber. Remember, it
needed 71. McCombie was counting all 40 of her members, but some Republicans,
including the far-right Illinois Freedom Caucus, opposed the belated
compromise. And others who are seeking teachers’ union contributions quietly
opposed the legislation.
Leader McCombie’s estimate of 17 House Democratic votes
may have been short. Others said the House Democratic total was significantly
higher. But House Speaker Chris Welch has an unwritten rule that bills which
don’t have enough support from his own caucus members to pass on the floor
won’t get called. In this case, that number would’ve been 71 out of 78 House
Democrats, which was an impossibly large number of votes, considering the
amount of liberal and progressive “No” votes in his caucus to begin with and
the significant pressure by the teachers’ unions and their allies. Beating this
bill was the unions’ only veto session goal, and they went all-out to make sure
everyone knew they were laser-focused on the topic.
So, we ended up with several session days of very loud,
media-friendly protests by proponents and very little actual legislative
progress. It was good (and likely quite expensive) theater, but that’s about
it.
Loss-chasing is when gamblers who are falling behind
increase their bets in order to catch up, only to almost always fall even
further behind. The proponents clearly had money to burn on a lost cause, and
then they doubled-down during veto session on a compromise that wasn’t going to
be called for a vote and exhibited no will to offer up a phase-out.
It almost looked like some of the people pushing the
extension were more interested in maintaining lucrative income tax credits in
perpetuity and punching at unions than making sure that at least some kids had
assistance.
