Should the government make massive cuts in its funding for social services to balance the budget? This is the question the state of Illinois is currently wrestling with.

Illinois has a massive deficit — upwards of $11 billion.  Earlier this year, the Illinois state legislature soundly rejected governor Pat Quinn’s proposal for shrinking the deficit: a 50% income tax increase (from 3% to 4.5%). In response, Gov. Quinn proposed a budget that shrunk the deficit in a different fashion: by cutting state aid to most social services by up to 50%. This chain of events was supposed to lead to some sort of resolution on June 30th, the last day of the fiscal year. On July 1st, however, Gov. Quinn vetoed the budget the legislature sent him (which included neither the 50% social service cuts nor the 50% income tax increase), and the saga continues.

Gov. Quinn has demonstrated in the past that he strongly favors the state funding for public and nonprofit programs his budget proposed to cut. Give the governor’s record, one likely explanation for his actions is that it is an act of political gamesmanship designed to force the legislature’s hand and pass his proposed income tax increase. The surprise, however, has been the number of legislators who have seriously entertained the prospect of passing it.

In response to this surprise, the constituencies effected by the prospective cuts have frantically lobbied Springfield to put their funding back into the budget. That money, however, has to come from somewhere. Unlike the federal government, Illinois is required by its constitution to have a balanced budget. (There can be shortfalls due to insufficient revenue, but they can’t be deliberately planned for and built into the budget in the way that Congress and the White House plan the national budget.) But, because of the recession, state revenues are down considerably. Unless the state implements a way to take in more revenue (such as a tax increase), the only way it can balance its budget is through making cuts of one kind or another.

[Full disclosure: I work at a nonprofit in Chicago that serves a population largely dependent on many of the services whose state funding Gov. Quinn has proposed to cut, such as Medicaid, drug treatment centers, psychological counseling (most of the clients at my nonprofit are mentally ill), homeless shelters, and job counseling. While my organization is not funded by the state at all, many of its clients — many of whom I know personally — will be directly affected by these cuts if they cuts are made.]

As of this writing, the situation remains unresolved. Although by law required to pass a budget of some kind — even a stop-gap 30-day budget — by now, the legislature and the governor have passed nothing.  The question of who will pay for the balanced budget is one Illinois still hasn’t answered.

The question I have for you, the reader, is twofold.

First, if the legislature decided to call (what one can reasonably say is) Gov. Quinn’s bluff, would that be wrong?  If so, why?

And, just as important, is there a good that would be served by not having the government provide those services — one that would outweigh the suffering that would result from cutting those services?  If so, what would you say it is?