When the smoke finally cleared in mid-July after the battle to produce a state budget, it was immediately obvious that the ashes were still smoldering and ready to reignite at any moment.

Although the Illinois legislature passed and Gov. Pat Quinn signed a $26.1 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year, Quinn estimates it is still $1.4 billion short in covering Medicaid payments, state employee health insurance premiums, funds for preschool education and grants for college students. Nor does it address an estimated $3.9 billion backlog in overdue bills from last fiscal year. 

In short, most of our elected “leaders” in state government couldn’t muster the political courage to either increase the state income tax or make the tough decisions to cut programs to meet declining revenue projections. Unless the economy reverses course quicker than a fastball rudely introduced to White Sox slugger Jim Thome’s bat, they’ll have to come back to Springfield before long to repeat the process. 

Of course, by postponing real decisions, lawmakers and the governor gave themselves more time to assess their opponents in next year’s primary and general elections. Meanwhile, across Illinois, state agencies and community service providers — and most important, the constituents they serve — face an uncertain future and an inability to plan for how to deal with the continuing crisis. 

It takes courage to combat a crisis. That’s a trait that is abundant in the soldiers fighting overseas, as well as parents back here battling to keep their households financially afloat while trying to instill values in their children. It’s evident in the small-business owners trying to keep their doors open despite a dramatic downturn in sales. Examples of courage are all around as people try to cope with these difficult times. But among our so-called leaders in Illinois government? Not so much.

A year ago in these pages, I went all old school on you and turned to the words of Winston Churchill for advice on political leadership when the then-governor and lawmakers couldn’t break their stalemate. Since then, some of the leading actors have changed, but the play remains essentially the same. So I’ll hark back again, this time to John F. Kennedy, who — as the saying goes — wrote the book on political courage. (Or not, of course. But despite the question over whether Kennedy or adviser Ted Sorensen actually penned the bulk of Profiles in Courage, the examples within still hold true. For convenience, I’ll attribute the words to Kennedy.)

As a political creature himself, Kennedy wasn’t insensitive to “the terrible pressures which discourage acts of political courage, which drive a Senator to abandon or subdue his conscience.”

He cites three political pressure points that stand out foremost:

Politicians “are by nature — and of necessity — social animals. We enjoy the comradeship and approval of our friends and colleagues. We prefer praise to abuse; popularity to contempt.” That human trait makes it difficult for a politician to stand alone on principle, or to step off the party line. It also leads to a willingness to compromise principles. However, “we should not be too hasty in condemning all compromise as bad morals,” Kennedy writes. “It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers … from crushing the group on the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum.” 

He acknowledges that “the Senator who follows the independent course of conscience is likely to discover that he has earned the disdain not only of his colleagues in the Senate and his associates in his party, but also that of the all-important contributors to his campaign fund.”

The second pressure point flows naturally from that last statement. “Few would deny,” Kennedy writes, “that the desire to be re-elected exercises a strong brake on independent courage.” Most politicians realize that “Senators who go down to defeat in a vain defense of a single principle will not be on hand to fight for that or any other principle in the future.” 

The perks of political office also are enticing, he says, and the thought of losing them “can cause even the most courageous politician serious loss of sleep. Thus, perhaps without realizing it, some Senators tend to take the easier, less troublesome path to harmonize or rationalize what at first appears to be a conflict between their conscience — or the result of their deliberations — and the majority opinion of their constituents.”

Those constituents are Kennedy’s third political pressure point. “We may tell ourselves that these pressure groups and letter writers represent only a small percentage of the voters — and this is true,” he writes. “But they are the articulate few whose views cannot be ignored and who constitute the greater part of our contacts with the public at large, whose opinions we cannot know, whose vote we must obtain and yet who in all probability have a limited idea of what we are trying to do.”

With those three pressure points — the craving to be appreciated as part of a team, the desire to be re-elected and the demands from constituents — it’s little wonder that so few politicians find the strength to exhibit true political courage. But what about those who have?

They acted courageously, Kennedy writes, “because each one’s need to maintain his own respect for himself was more important to him than his popularity with others — because his desire to win or maintain a reputation for integrity and courage was stronger than his desire to maintain his office — because his conscience, his personal standard of ethics, his integrity or morality, call it what you will, was stronger than the pressures of public disapproval — because his faith that his course was the best one, and would ultimately be vindicated, outweighed his fear of public reprisal.”

In the spring legislative session, the Senate Democrats did exhibit political courage by passing a bill that would not only have increased the state income tax by two-thirds but would have attempted to deal with the ongoing structural deficit. That legislation went nowhere in the House, and now its supporters will have to live with their votes during the coming campaign season. Agree or disagree with the plan, it attempted to deal with the problem and voting for it took courage.

But in the end lawmakers in both chambers passed a budget they knew was severely underfunded. They refused to specify necessary cuts, leaving that dirty work to Quinn. And now, it’s nearly certain that they’ll have to return to the Capitol sometime during the fiscal year to clean up the mess they left.

Between now and then, they would be wise to revisit Kennedy’s book.

* * *

In this issue, we again publish a list of those who made financial contributions to Illinois Issues during the past year. We thank them, as well as all of our loyal readers, for the commitment you demonstrate to public policy journalism in Illinois. Without your support, we would not exist.

Dana Heupel can be reached at heupel.dana@uis.edu.

Illinois Issues, September 2009