{"id":686754,"date":"2010-03-09T17:32:01","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T22:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/illinoiseducationassociation.org\/?p=6287"},"modified":"2026-10-04T11:19:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:19:53","slug":"taxes-are-not-good-or-bad-but-they-are-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/686754","title":{"rendered":"Taxes are not good, or bad, but they are necessary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6296\" title=\"tax in dictionary\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/illinoiseducationassociation.org\/media\/tax-in-dictionary-300x198.jpg?resize=300%2C198\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" \/>Taxes are the way states pay for services provided in areas such as K-12 education, higher education, health care, care to the elderly and disabled, road repair, infrastructure and a host of other services.<\/p>\n<p>The economic recession has resulted in lower tax revenues due to lost jobs, reduced wages and lowered economic activity.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, as people lose jobs, suffer a loss in income and experience the impact of economic distress, there is a greater need for the services provided by state.<\/p>\n<p>Illinois and 47 other states face budget shortfalls due to declining tax revenues and an increasing demand for services. Nearly all states have cut spending.\u00a0Thirty states also have opted for a balanced approach that includes raising taxes.<\/p>\n<p>Taxes and spending cuts are not good or bad. They are simply tools used by a state to address its budget shortfall. While Illinois is using spending cuts, its failure to increase tax revenues leaves our state with an &#8220;unbalanced&#8221; approach.<\/p>\n<p>Gov. Pat Quinn&#8217;s tax proposals seem to move in the direction\u00a0of more balance while Sen. Bill Brady, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, has called\u00a0only for more cuts.\u00a0That approach\u00a0takes a bad situation and makes it more imbalanced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taxes are the way states pay for services provided in areas such as K-12 education, higher education, health care, care to the elderly and disabled, road repair, infrastructure and a host of other services. The economic recession has resulted in lower tax revenues due to lost jobs, reduced wages and lowered economic activity. Meanwhile, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3278,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2SEG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3278"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":788256,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686754\/revisions\/788256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}