Thousand's of children in Illinois foster care system are at risk of losing services due to the states fiscal crisis. A tax increase can help to prevent this.
Dear Representative or Senator:
I am asking you to support a tax increase to protect 175,000 mentally ill people, 220,000 people with developmental disabilities, 16,000 abused and neglected children and 65,000 people who are substance abusers. Although a tax increase would be hard on me, without such an increase, our state will be in far worse shape. The Chicago Tribune estimates more than 100, 000 social service workers will lose their jobs. This will affect not only them, but also the people they support.
Think of the consequences of 100,000 people losing their jobs, the impact on their families and their communities. They won%u2019t be able to pay their rent, buy groceries or pay their utilities. This will then impact the whole community and cause a tremendous loss of sales tax revenue.
Think of the impact of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people no longer able to receive needed services and the impact on their families. For each person who does not receive needed services, they suffer, their family suffers and their community suffers. The jail and prison populations will increase. It costs far more to house people in jail (about $35,000 per year) than to provide them with needed treatment to remain in the community. Hospital emergency rooms will become the primary care provider, being less effective and costing far more than community care. This will overburden the ER system and cause a breakdown of emergency services.
Asking someone who made $50,000 in income last year to pay $375 more (the effective rate with a 1% increase after their federal income tax deduction of $563 with a 1.5% increase) is a small price to pay to avoid stopping services to hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens and to avoid layoffs of so many workers.
Although I hope more efficiency can be found in Illinois government, there is not $12 billion of waste. While correcting past problems, we cannot ignore the State%u2019s legal and moral obligation to the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled and the children and elderly who have no one else to protect them.
Please vote %u201Cyes%u201D to a tax increase to protect the workers and the most needy in our state. They have no where else to turn. No place else to receive services.
