DSA

On Halloween, the Illinois General Assembly voted on a $1.5 billion funding package for public transit in Chicago. This budget funds the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and PACE, in addition to replacing the Regional Transportation Authority with a new board, the Northern Illinois Transit Authority.

This legislation comes after the Illinois General Assembly failed to fund public transit during its regular session. CTA leadership, workers, and local leaders spent months raising the alarm. The CTA initially projected service cuts of 40%, including cutting more than half of its bus lines and ending or limiting service on most train lines. This apocalyptic estimate was revised down only after the CTA pledged to increase fares and received an infusion of cash from the Regional Transportation Authority.

As socialists, it shouldn’t be surprising that a state government led not by working people, but by an “actual billionaire”, didn’t bring this crisis to a just conclusion.

Instead of rushing to fund the city’s transit, a system nearly a million riders rely on every day, the state government – led by Governor J.B. Pritzker – played a game of chicken with leaders of the city and the CTA by hammering out agreements in private up until the last moment, leaving the fate of workers in Chicago uncertain.

After passing legislation in the eleventh hour, the governor expects us to applaud his benevolence in not firing the gun he pointed at the heads of the city’s workers. He deserves no credit for averting a catastrophe he helped engineer.

While the increase in the CTA’s budget has been lauded by political leaders in the Democratic Party, it comes at a cost to working people. The methods of revenue raising – sales taxes, toll roads, and increased fares – all come directly from the pocket of workers in Illinois. These regressive taxes place yet more of the state’s tax burden on working class people while the wealthiest people in our state escape paying their fair share, including a proposed tax on the investments of billionaires that was killed by Pritzker himself.

As the leading socialist organization in Chicago, CDSA has fought for full funding of the CTA and democratic control of our transit. We cannot be satisfied with any budget that forces workers who are given less and less to pay more and more. Until we win a democratic economy controlled by the working class, our minimum demand remains the same no matter what budget crisis threatens our communities: Tax the rich.