ILLINOIS NEWS NETWORK
Illinois recently passed a milestone. The state’s backlog of unpaid bills topped $12.8 billion, enough to put every man, woman, and child on the hook for $1,000 in debt. But one state lawmaker says Illinois is in far worse shape than that.
There are slightly less than 13 million people in the state, and Illinois has about $13 billion in unpaid bills. Simple math breaks that down to $1,000 per person in the state. But State Senator Chuck Weaver said that’s only calculating the unpaid bills.
“Take that $1,000 per man, woman, and child and then add to that Illinois’ unfunded pensions of about $130 billion,” Weaver explained. “The debt is about ten times that number,” or closer to $11,000 per person.
Weaver says when you do the rest of the math, the burden on taxpayers gets even larger.
“That $11,000 includes children. So if you take a family of three, you get $33,000,” Weaver said. “But you have to add to that the fact that half the people in the state don’t pay income taxes. Now you’re up to $66,000 for the half the state that pays income taxes.”
He says that’s a lot of debt for Illinois taxpayers. And that doesn’t even get to what they’re on the hook for locally.
