One person controls Illinois more than any other. That person is not the Governor. Rather it’s Michael Madigan, Speaker of the House. And it’s been that way for 33 years.
This is a guest post by Austin Berg, of the Illinois Policy Institute.
Madigan’s rules: How one man controls Illinois
Illinoisans may elect who goes to the House of Representatives, but they don’t choose their representation – at least not in any meaningful sense. The power belongs to Madigan. And he represents himself.
On a single day in 2011, Illinois lawmakers introduced and passed the largest tax hike in modern state history in a matter of hours.
And on May 25, 2016, House Democrats introduced and passed a 500-page bill in an evening.
Something is wrong with Illinois democracy. Beyond the budget battle, the Land of Lincoln has failed to create enough decent jobs, failed to provide quality care to the state’s most vulnerable residents, and has shackled its children to debt they can never pay.
Contrary to what many people may think, this is not a bug within Illinois’ legislative process. Rather, it is a feature of House Speaker Mike Madigan’s iron grip over it.
In his role as House speaker, a position he has held for 31 of the past 33 years, Madigan has used many of the General Assembly’s administrative rules to eliminate meaningful debate and maximize his power. His ousting of effective, open democracy has harmed Illinoisans of all political stripes.
The House Rules Committee is Madigan’s golden goose.
When a state representative introduces a bill, it goes to the House Rules Committee. The Rules Committee is then supposed to assign the bill to a relevant committee for further discussion.
If only it were so simple.
Instead, Madigan hoards bills in the Rules Committee, which is chaired by his longtime second-in-command, state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. Nothing moves until Madigan gets what he wants. Any bill challenging the speaker’s power, no matter how popular, is as good as dead.
In the current General Assembly alone, reforms on term limits, redistricting and constitutionally protected pension benefits have all been killed in the Rules Committee. Two amendments limiting the number of years a lawmaker can serve as speaker met their end in the Rules Committee, too.
Broad property-tax reform is another popular victim. That’s unsurprising, given that Madigan makes a fortune helping Chicago business owners lower their property-tax bills.
It’s almost comical, until you realize the perversion of democracy at hand.
Illinois is an extreme outlier when it comes to rank-and-file lawmakers’ ability to get a bill out of committee. According to a 2004 study from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, Illinois is home to two of only six state legislative chambers in the country where motions to discharge a bill from committee are subject to approval from leadership.
Illinoisans may elect who goes to the House of Representatives, but they don’t choose their representation – at least not in any meaningful sense. The power belongs to Madigan. And he represents himself.
If Madigan chooses to release a bill from the Rules Committee, it ends up in one of more than 50 committees, each chaired by a lawmaker Madigan picks for the job. Those positions come with stipends worth thousands of dollars each.
Oftentimes, those positions don’t even require much work. More than half of Illinois’ House committees have acted on fewer than five bills in 2016. Ten committees haven’t held a single meeting.
Some states, such as Nebraska and South Carolina, have their committee chairmen elected by their peers in the Statehouse. Others have far fewer committees that meet more frequently.
Not Illinois.
Assigning committee chairs comes with a great deal of leverage. And there’s more where that came from.
If a lawmaker is lucky enough to see her bill move out of Rules Committee, monitoring its progress can come with endless frustration.
Madigan can call votes on a wide range of bills at a moment’s notice. Add in his use of hundreds of “shell bills” (bills that make meaningless changes but are ripe for last-second amendments) and it becomes extremely difficult for reform-minded lawmakers to effectively fight for their causes.
It is with these tools that Madigan pulled off the 2011 income-tax hike, which took $31 billion from Illinois taxpayers with no reforms to show for it.
Every once in a while, a mouse will get out of Madigan’s maze. But that lawmaker risks the speaker’s revenge at every turn of the legislative process, not to mention in upcoming elections, where Madigan wields millions of dollars as chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois.
It takes a rare ego for someone to believe himself capable of running a state on his own. But such is Madigan’s, and he won’t change course of his own accord. The fact the state of the state hasn’t forced the speaker to change is clear evidence of this.
Rank-and-file lawmakers must summon the courage to reform the system. It is inefficient and undemocratic.
No one man should have all that power.
Austin Berg is the writer for the Illinois Policy Institute.
What do you expect from one of the most corrupt state governments in the nation. I would say the most corrupt but there is always New Jersey, New York and Louisiana to consider.
Indeed, the whole state of Illinois is HIDEOUSLY CORRUPT which is why Chicago is such a financial disaster and why the State just throws billions of dollars of bills due in a pile and ignores them and it gets worse every single day. The big question is whether the PEOPLE OF ILLINOIS are equally corrupt and whether that is the reason they allow or ignore all of this grotesque corruption.
The best part is that their corruption is represented as some natural disaster of which no one is to blame and no one cold have seen coming. Public “servants” simply doing their job. we see this attitude all the way to th etop, where even our president seems detached from hte destruction he has wrought, blaming it on the disfunctional government of which he sees himself not a part of and even as yet another victim of it…..and the press concurs.
My cousins live there and tell me they hate their government.
what’s the problem, illini love to be fucked up the ass and madigan only does it financially not physically..
if the illini ever grow balls maybe they will derserve to be better off, right now, they can go on killing thmselves on the southside of Chi town.
rise upviolently or get fucked financially, the choice is at is has always been when dealing with a dictator who at least gets it done his way – not anyone else’s way, but anyone lese is a moron
probably an over the top comment…but there you go
If Illinois were a country there would be a revolution and Madigan would be hanging from a lamp post. He is filth.
You besmirch the reputation of filth with that comparison!
I don’t doubt that in the least, but why don’t the people of Illinois – and the press there – move to put an end to that grotesque corruption?
Luv the com-ments. Grammar ain’t my A Game either 😇
I thought this could only happen in China.
Presumably. the Speaker is elected to the house. Perhaps this blog should be published in the Illinois newspapers and Mr Madigan challenged to take the writers/publisher to court for libel; similar to editor Ian Hislop’s Private Eye paper in the UK. This could be done during an election campaign.
So, does Madigan have the power to issue executive orders yet?
Tuesday can’t come soon enough.,I am closing on my house and getting the hell out of Illinois.
Congrats – Well Done
Mish, I love you, and think you have some of the best thinking on the web but it’s time to stop this non stop bitching about your state and act like the intelligent person you are and get the fuck out of dodge. Find yourself a home in one of the better states which in Illinois’s case is almost anywhere and turn your attentions to things you can do something about. Voting with your feet is the best statement anyone can make.
I have explained numerous time why we are here. It’s not just me. My wife has a fantastic job with 35 days vacation. We boight property in Montana and plan to move there when the time is right. And I won’t stop bitching about Illinois even after I am gone.
Right now, we are in Western Montana looking at property. My wife and I are life long residents of the southwest suburbs of Chicago. We have had enough and are planning our escape.
We are in Columbia Falls, Whitefish area
About 30 minutes from Glacier National Park
Beautiful area and wide open spaces. We are focusing our search to Flathead County. God willing, we will be neighbors soon. Take care.
The Public has to have resolution to vote to have a vote on term limits. If its denied vote them all out for those who will agree to term limits.
This is the way the Romans have always worked. If you don’t like it – get the hell out. Problem is where you going to go? The Pope’s Agenda 2030 is a campaign to enslave the whole world. Here’s a taste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development#Income
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development
We all know that government is corrupt, incompetent,and malevolent, some more than others. The question is what can we do to stop being abused over and over. Someone somewhere needs to draft a framework that needs to be adopted nationwide from federal all the way down to local governments. One of them is term limits, one term only, maybe a longer term to serve, but only once. Perhaps we can socialized the election process for politicians, meaning no contributions whatsoever. A framework for elections can be drafted and all running will be funded equally and the process shortened. The current election process is a three ring circus and painfully cruel to the electorate.
That is why the founders were so insistent that gov. be as small as possible and that there be state rights.
PS very short term limits are also needed for all gov. agency managers.
Democrats + public unions + closed shop state = massive corruption, bankrupt and ruin
Nobody lives forever. Eventually nature will cast a vote against Madigan. And as far as his successors, infighting for control of Madigan’s power void will speed up the power shift.
Democrats + public unions + closed shop state = bankruptcy, misery and ruin
“Rank-and-file lawmakers must summon the courage to reform the system. It is inefficient and undemocratic.”
Martin Armstrong has repeatedly remarked that there is going to have to be a crash and burn.
Why has Madigan been there for 33 years? Voters keep sending him back, election after election.
People give congress as low as a 13% approval rating and 90% of them are re-elected.
There is supposedly all this anger, yet that will be the case this year, too. Speaker Ryan will be re-elected, Nancy Pelosi will be re-elected.
Except for seats where someone is retiring, almost all the same faces up for election will be back next year.
The republican party has been fighting off Trump and the democratic party has been fighting off Sanders. They don’t want reform. They want the club to stay just the way it has been.
As Gruber said, the American voter is STUPID and congressman X said that the American voter is IGNORANT. That is just the way the political parties like it. That way they can fool the people.
I live in Illinois, nearly 300 miles from Madigan’s district. There is nothing I’ve ever been able to do to end his power. Mish lives in the Chicago area, and he can’t vote against Madigan either. What we can do is raise local hell when Madigan funds a local candidate through the Democrat apparatus. If we could make the locals afraid to take Madigan’s money, we would be on our way to change.
Of course it’s no surprise that this guest post comes from the same organization that Mish is listed as a senior fellow-so it should be taken with huge grains of salt.
LOL
Care to challenge it with anything more than an ad hominem attack?
For starters address how the only legislation that has been passed for about 33 years has been agreed to by Madigan. Then tell me why Illinois is in such bad shape.
Since when is truth and facts an ad hominen attack? The truth and facts are an absolute defense, and you know it.
What fact did you present other than I am a senior fellow.
Do you even know what the term ad hominem means?
Clearly not.
Look it up. Then address what I asked with pertinent facts.
Mish
For someone who keeps insisting that gold is money, I rest my case.
So, in other words, Haruka, you don’t have an argument. Just like anyone who has a problem with public sector pensions is a “hater” and a friend to the Koch brothers. You and your kind are so utterly predictable in your defense of the status quo.
Correct, Sean. Haruka does not see to dispute the facts this post regarding the problems in Illinois, nor the facts in other prior posts concerning pensions in Illinois, the school bard in Chicago, etc. If he/she could rebut those fact they would, but they can’t so the resort to the ad hominem attack instead.
Jobs are a huge problem in Illinois. In my small community near a major university, I know a number of professionals who have to commute out of state while their families stay behind to finish school. It’s a tidal wave building up.
Rather than a corruption of democracy, this IS democracy. IOW, nothing more than the most current in a long line of attempts to legitimize those in power. No different from Divine Ordinance, Blue Blood etc. before them.
Democracy worked well around the founding of the US. As it served to DELEGITIMIZE the existing power structure, built around direct hereditary privilege. But once that transition was over, democracy is no better, worse nor different than any other form of hack for putting an arbitrary “ruler” in place.
Today, “democratically elected” has become the new “blue blood”, Madigan being nothing more than one unusually obvious example. At least in the US context. Which is why those able to look a bit past the childish illusion that “weee” are somehow “diiiiferent”, are on the rise. Sensibly delegitimizing current rulers, “democratically elected” or not, by referring to Sharia.
End of story is: Power is never legitimate. Once the indoctrination apparatus of whomever is currently in charge, manage to dumb the populace down to a level where that obviousness is no longer widely understood and appreciated, time is ripe for a hard reboot. Mogadishu style, if nothing else
Tim McVeigh / Enola Gay 2016 🙂
All of this explains the Illinois license plates running around here in the west these days, real estate listings in hand.
Yeah’ he is a giant turd.
Madigan runs Illinois the same way as the union gangster thugs of north Detroit wrecked Packard Motors; into the ditch of oblivion, squeezed and bled completely dry of it’s lifeblood and all it’s money!