Is this Illinois politics, or the set of Survivor?

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 8:38 am by Jane the Actuary

Is this Illinois politics, or the set of Survivor? 2014-05-15T08:38:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Remember the first season of Survivor? Rich, Kelly, and Rudy formed an alliance and made it to the end based in no small part on the fact that the rest of the contestants played the game as individuals, without any long-term strategy, voting for the individual that they disliked most at any given point in time. Everyone else expected their fellow players to be truthful — and even after alliances became the norm, early alliances were, it seems to me, fairly stable: “I gave my word.”

Now, alliances shift often, and people regularly promise changing groups of people, “final five!” “final three!” and so on, with handshakes and pledges that “you have my word.” And those who are betrayed when they alliances shift aren’t troubled, for the most part: “It’s the game,” they say. And they betrayers, themselves, afterwards, say, “this isn’t the real me; I’m always honest and fair-minded. But this is a game, and the rules of the game dictate that you lie, and everyone understands that.”

Michael Madigan seems to think that politics is nothing but a game of Survivor. Promises that the “temporary” personal income tax increase from 3.5% to 5% would expire, well, on the expiration date, have no more meaning to him than do the promises that Survivor contestants make to each other. It’s a game, and, apparently, everyone knows and is supposed to understand that. Truth? Truth doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean anything — providing another example of my complaint last week.

His current game: the budget the Illinois Democrats (and remember, they have all the power, and the Republicans none) are crafting takes it for granted that the 5% tax rate will be made permanent. Why put the cart before the horse? This is what Madigan says:

House Speaker Michael Madigan said there’s plenty of time to pick up votes to extend the income-tax hike before lawmakers head home for the summer, saying the strategy of voting on spending first is aimed at building support for the tax by showing lawmakers the services the extra funds would provide back home.

“We’re working our roll call and our purpose in advancing the budget first is to set the bar against which people work to convince people to vote for the revenue,” Madigan said.

No where is there any hint that he and all the other Democrats promised up and down that the increase was temporary. And the Tribune’s editorial page today collects some of the promises that Democratic candidates made in 2012 reaffirming that they would not extend the tax. Their bottom line:

So if you’re keeping score at home: Many of Madigan’s own Democrats will be breaking their word if they vote to extend the tax hike — or vote for a budget that depends on extending it.

But if we’re living in a world in which Madigan and his colleagues openly say, “the rules of the game are to lie and break promises as needed to get agreement from others initially but afterwards accomplish your own goals,” how do we move forward?

Well, besides leaving Illinois, that is? (Because, for those of us with local jobs, children in school, a home and neighborhood we like, etc., the prospect of moving is very disruptive and not something we’d like to contemplate.)

Of course, the first lesson learned is simply not to believe any politician. But how do you fix the system if the first rule of the game is “everyone is lying”? In Survivor, it ultimately doesn’t matter — one of the contestants will win a million dollars and the rest will go home speaking of their “life-changing experience,” but no one will be harmed by the lies, and there’s no great need to achieve anything that will fail due to deception. In real life, the fact that politicians are not only not trustworthy, but increasingly brazen in their untrustworthiness is a huge roadblock to a functional government, far more so than complaints about “extremist” politicians of one stripe or another.

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