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Chicago’s Cook County is a heavily indebted municipality with too many people drawing benefits and too few working and paying taxes. The county has accumulated more than $7 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, which looks good only when compared with the much larger pension funding holes dug by politicians for the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. The region is just about the last place one would want to create an incentive for people to avoid the productive work that creates independent citizens and generates new tax revenue. Naturally, local officials are eager to give it yet
another shot. Alex Ortiz of Fox television station WFLD in Chicago recently reported: The Cook County Board of Commissioners voted to continue funding a guaranteed income program for the 2026 fiscal year, which provided direct financial support to thousands of households during its initial phase… The guaranteed income program was launched in 2022 with
the use of $42 million in federal pandemic relief funds. Over two years, the county provided $500 monthly checks with no strings attached to 3,250 households. The county allocated $7.5 million to the program in its fiscal year 2026 budget. That money will come from the county’s “equity fund.” Reserve federal pandemic money can also be used in the future of the program, a county spokesperson said. Nothing says waste, fraud and abuse like “federal pandemic relief funds.” And taxpayers have certainly been trained to be on guard when politicians start talking about “equity.” But the tragedy here is that significant damage will be done even if all the money
somehow finds its way to the intended recipients.
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