It’s the same failed approach former Gov. Pat Quinn took – evidently, Democratic leaders have failed to learn from the state’s past mistakes. Madigan has focused on an additional tax hike even though a recent study from the Tax Foundation shows that Illinois’ 2011 income-tax hike saddled Illinoisans with the fifth-highest tax burden among the 50 states, and the second-highest tax burden in the Midwest. Even worse, Madigan’s idea of restoring the 2011 income-tax rates would likely impose on Illinoisans the highest tax burden in the Midwest and fourth-highest in the country.

The major drivers of Illinois’ budget problems are an underperforming economy, massive taxpayer out-migration, and unaffordable spending promises. But to hear Madigan talk about it, Illinois has gone without a state budget for seven months because Illinoisans don’t pay enough taxes. And the speaker’s fix is all too familiar in Illinois: another big tax hike without any economic or spending reforms.

According to Madigan, the conversation about Illinois’ income tax should begin at the 5% rate that Illinoisans paid from 2011 through 2014. Madigan’s budget necessitates that the average Illinois household pay an additional $800 per year in income taxes.

Local governments in Illinois have been busy raising taxes, too.

Take Chicago and Cook County, for example. In 2015 alone, the tax bill for the average Chicago household went up by $1,100 per year just from city and county tax hikes. And after all that, Chicago aldermen are discussing the possibility of another property-tax hike of a few hundred million dollars per year in 2016. A state income-tax hike on top of these added local tax increases would create a dramatically higher overall tax burden.

• Allowing local governments to opt out of collective bargaining and determine public-sector wages and benefits
• Reforming the state’s workers’ compensation law
• Reforming state and local government-worker pension systems
• Reforming the state’s procurement process
• Exempting local governments from the state’s prevailing-wage law

Years of reckless policies have put Illinois in the nation’s biggest fiscal hole, and it’s time politicians stopped digging the state further into debt. Illinois needs spending reform to correct the policy mistakes that have put Illinois in such dire straits.

Illinois’ tax-burden ranking was as low as No. 34 in 1998, but it shot up to No. 5 as of fiscal year 2012. An income-tax hike would make Illinois the most heavily tax-burdened state in the Midwest and among the top four most tax-burdened states in the U.S.