Collateral damage. That would be the appropriate term for people in Illinois suffering from mental illness, the developmentally disabled, the homebound elderly and the working poor who rely on the social safety net provided by the state.
The programs they depend on face an uncertain future as the political war rages between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Some pundits refer to the conflict between Rauner and Madigan, D-Chicago, as a game of chicken — popularized in the movie “Rebel Without a Cause” when a character portrayed by James Dean accepts a challenge from a rival to drive their two cars at full speed toward the edge of a cliff. The fellow who bails out of his car first is “chicken.” I suppose that means the movie character who drove over the cliff and died in a fiery crash was the winner.
But I’m not sure that’s an appropriate analogy for what’s going on in Illinois because neither Rauner nor Madigan are risking their lives, nor their political careers. In fact, it’s possible that both will benefit as their political bases rally behind them.
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Merriam-Webster defines collateral damage as “injury inflicted on something other than an intended target; specifically: civilian casualties of a military operation.”
People really don’t care much about collateral damage. That’s the essential point of creating such terminology to describe innocents who are killed or wounded. They’re not victims. They’re something less than human, “something other than the intended target.”
In recent days, attention has focused on whether state employees will be paid now that the new fiscal year has begun without a state budget. Lawsuits have been filed to determine if it is legal for the state, without a budget, to provide the funds necessary to reimburse state workers or pay them part of their salaries.
Certain essential services, such as law enforcement and state prisons, will continue to be funded, even if the governor refuses to sign the deficit budget passed by the legislature.
I can understand how anyone who lives from paycheck to paycheck would want to get their money to pay the bills and provide for their families.
And it’s a pretty shrewd political move by Rauner to say that he wants to pay every government worker, even as he and the Democrats continue to spar over his “Turnaround Agenda.”
Madigan calls Rauner’s position “extreme” because the governor is demanding things such as workers’ compensation reform, tort reform, a statewide vote on term limits and changes to collective bargaining. The state’s Democratic Party leader contends that those issues have nothing to do with balancing the state budget.
Rauner maintains that approving such reforms would turn around the state’s business climate, leading to new investment and jobs and more tax revenue.
Rauner also realizes that he’s not going to be able to claim that his election changed anything in Illinois if he doesn’t get some of these items approved. The only way he’s going to get his political opponents to negotiate is to create a crisis that generates public pressure for change.
I understand all of that. You have to drop some political bombshells to bring the enemy to the table.
But it’s been well-documented that Illinois for decades has ignored the needs of the truly needy. While elected officials were pilfering the pension funds to finance other state programs, while they were forcing property tax bills to skyrocket by underfunding public education, they were also refusing to adequately fund all the programs that provide therapy to the mentally ill, provide jobs and housing for the developmentally disabled or pay a decent wage to the caregivers who dress and feed the homebound.
And all the while the state was outsourcing important services, shifting the burden for caring for our neediest citizens to social service agencies — non-profit groups that, in theory, could do the work more cheaply than the state.
State officials discovered that they could save even more money by refusing to increase state payments to the private agencies, which made up the difference by organizing fundraising events or cutting staff.
The public didn’t much care. The state was saving money. And everyone seemed to agree, including Republicans, that getting the state out of the business of providing services to the needy was a very good thing.
As we all know, the state now owes more than $100 million to its pension funds and doesn’t even have enough money to pay its bills for the upcoming year. No one in Springfield has a plan to fix the pension problem. That’s not even been the subject of discussion this spring.
The governor, who blasted Democrats for their spending ways when he ran for office last year, has indicated on numerous occasions that he now realizes more tax revenue is needed to continue running the state. He’s just not going to talk about what taxes he’s willing to increase until he gets those “Turnaround Agenda” approved by the legislature.
That’s how you end up with collateral damage.
Neither side wants to see innocent people hurt. Democrats and Republicans would tell you they are compassionate. Editorial writers have said it’s a shame this sort of thing has to happen, but it’s the cost of reform. Something had to change, and it’s about time a governor took a courageous stand.
Did I mention that for many years the state also delayed by months its payments to social service agencies, forcing some of them to take out lines of credit from banks based on the payments they were expecting to receive? I think I overlooked that, but it’s sometimes difficult to remember all the failures of our government leaders.
The people spoke last fall when they elected Rauner governor. They said they wanted something different — an end to the corruption, an end to the never-ending increases in fees and taxes, a forward-looking philosophy that would create more jobs and cut the fat out of government.
Many people believed that by cutting the fat they would end the sweetheart deals between politicians and their campaign contributors or at the very least change the patronage system that rewarded political workers with state jobs.
I don’t think any of that has happened. Maybe it’s too early.
But the collateral damage is certainly mounting. That’s likely something voters don’t really believe. As always in such cases, there’s a tendency to think body counts are exaggerated.
Photographs and stories about the actual human toll won’t likely matter either because “the other side” will get the blame for putting civilians in harm’s way.
In a war, there are always going to be some casualties. The losses are acceptable, inevitable, to obtain victory, the public is told.
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There will be no images of burned-out buildings to illustrate the carnage or corpses piled high in the streets. This war is not as devastating as that.
Instead, more people suffering from alcohol and drug abuse, or those who are mentally ill, will simply be sent to jails and prisons. Elderly parents of developmentally disabled children will do their best to provide for their children’s needs at home. Some disabled who were able to work and live with the help of caregivers may find themselves in nursing homes.
The human toll won’t be as upsetting to the public as the increasing financial cost to the state.
If you really believe in your cause, you can live with the collateral damage, I suppose. Some suffering is necessary for the greater good.
That’s what the political leaders will always tell you. As fate would have it, they never seem to suffer at all.