Medicaid cuts would affect our families and neighbors

There IS a Gulf of America.

It’s the chasm between the 1% and the rest of us.

Still, Senate Republicans on April 5 approved, 51-48, their multitrillion-dollar tax breaks and spending cuts framework, which will now go to the House, where a vote to reconcile differences in what House Republicans passed on Feb. 25 is expected this month, so a final product could go to Trump by Memorial Day.

Democrats accused Republicans of laying the groundwork for cutting key safety net programs to help pay for more than $5 trillion tax cuts they say disproportionately benefit the rich. And a handful of Senators opposed the bill.

Voting against the Senate measure, Republican Susan Collins from Maine said the potential Medicaid cuts “would be very detrimental to a lot of families and disabled individuals and seniors.”

Another Republican opponent, libertarian Rand Paul of Kentucky, questioned the math being used by his colleagues (something called “current policy baseline,” which artificially claims there’s no increased cost in extending the tax cuts since it would merely renew current law). Paul said it really would pile on the debt – “Something’s fishy,” he remarked.

Trump and the GOP are looking for a way to extend 2017’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” that mostly enriched the wealthy and big corporations – an extension that would add $4.6 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The highest-income households (the top 5%) would receive more than 45% of the benefits if the expiring provisions of the 2017 tax cuts are extended, according to an analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

The original bill Republicans pushed through (barely, 217-215), “House Continuing Resolution 14” requires about $880 billion in cuts over the next decade to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that mostly benefit people earning $450,000/year, and though it instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to propose where to cut, it doesn’t specify how, Medicaid (and SNAP food stamps) are the likely places.

The consequences could be far-reaching for families and states, taking health care and other assistance from the neediest Americans. The bottom line: cutting Medicaid takes health care away from those who need it to benefit those who literally don’t need more money.

“This budget resolution is an attack on the jobs, families and communities of everyday Americans,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “It puts millions of Americans’ jobs at risk, including nursing home and home care workers, substance-abuse counselors, midwives, and hospital and community health-care center workers, along with jobs across food processing and production, [plus] librarians and public utility workers to EMTs and firefighters [in] rural communities and poorer red states, forcing those state and local governments to stretch what little budget they have even further.”

It would increase inequality, and “hurt most working families,” reported the Economic Policy Institute, and the Government Accounting Office says that includes tens of thousands of veterans would be affected.

 

RECENT HISTORY

For years, traditional Medicaid insurance was mainly available to children and their caregivers, people with disabilities and pregnant women. But the Affordable Care Act, which passed in 2010, four years later let more people qualify for Medicaid on the basis of income. Known as “Medicaid expansion,” it extended coverage to adults making up to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $21,000 a year for a single person. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court said the decision of whether to expand the program would be left up to the states, and 40 states and the District of Columbia (led by Democrats and Republicans alike) opted in.

Nationwide, 70 million Americans receive Medicaid (see at bottom), and because of expanded Medicaid eligibility, more than 21 million people with low incomes got health insurance. The federal government pays most of the cost of Medicaid by matching a portion of what states spend – at least 50% of state spending, and states administer the program.

In Illinois, Illinois had 2.9 million people using Medicaid before its expansion, after which it gained hundreds of thousands of recipients.

In the Labor Paper circulation area, thousands of residents represented by two Republicans who voted for the House bill could be hurt. According to ACASignups.net, 139,015 residents in Rep. Darin LaHood’s 16^th District receive Medicaid, and 174,085 Medicaid recipients in Mary Miller’s 15^th District.

After the February vote, LaHood didn’t refer to his constituents, instead parroting Trump’s endorsement of what the president called a “big. beautiful bill.”

Axios reported LaHood saying the budget bill “serves as the blueprint for extending President Trump's historic tax cuts, securing our southern border, bolstering our military, unleashing American energy, and setting us on a path toward responsible government spending for future generations.”

If Congress cuts Medicaid, its costs would shift to states, which may have to trim coverage in economically perilous times, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker joined Sen. Dick Durbin on Feb. 28 to encourage public opposition to the cuts.

“Red alert, everybody,” Pritzker said. “It is time to wake up. Get out. Do something.”

Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Schaumburg) said he received a letter from a man who lives with autism and pleaded with the congressman to “save Medicaid,” saying he “cannot be healthy” without it.

Krishnamoorthi commented, “This man is about to see his Medicaid and his services cut, and for what? For tax breaks for billionaires, oligarchs and ‘broligarchs.’ That is wrong.”

SEIU National Media on Feb. 13 warned, “Make no mistake: Radical changes to Medicaid will hurt us all. Cutting Medicaid will shrink funding for other vital services and infrastructure families depend on, from child care to Meals on Wheels, while putting increased pressure on service providers by decreasing resources that are already insufficient.” 

Republicans’ House majority is the tightest in modern history (218-215), and there are cracks in the GOP’s “red wall.” In February, Nevada’s Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo called on Congress not to slash Medicaid funding, and Republican Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who voted for the House bill, later said, “If a bill is put in front of me that guts benefits mu neighbors rely on, I will not vote for it.”

 

NEW WORK REQUIREMENT OPTION?

A back-door “compromise” floated by some Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, would be adding work requirement for Medicaid enrollees. A 2023 CBO analysis found that imposing new work rules on Medicaid recipients ages 19 to 55 who are not parents or caregivers could cut federal spending by an estimated $109 billion over the next 10 years. However, that could also mean between 4.6 million and 5.2 million adults ages 19 to 55 losing health-care coverage, according to an analysis from the Urban Institute, which reported, “Most adults who would lose eligibility for federal Medicaid funding ARE working, engaged in work-related activities, or could qualify for exemptions not readily identifiable through state databases but could still face disenrollment because of the reporting requirements.”

Their study cited several barriers to maintaining eligibility, from lack of broadband access to inadequate transportation.

On Feb. 18, Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity that Medicaid “is not going to be touched,” yet the next day he endorsed the House measure that makes it impossible to cut $880,000 without touching Medicaid..

Congresswoman Katherine Clark (D-MA), House Whip, said, “Do you know what it cost to keep a kid on Medicaid? $10 per day. What do Republicans want to give away to the already rich? $6 million – per billionaire.  Think about that.

“For a billionaire that $6 million is not even a rounding error,” she added. “There is no moral code under which that is acceptable. There is no public demand for it. There is no logical reason for it other than total fealty to billionaire donors."”

What happens next seems to depend on whether Congressional Republicans will stand for the people they’re supposed to represent or stand up against Trump.

 

 What is Medicaid?

Medicaid and Medicare were created by the same legislation — an addition to the Social Security Act — signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

Medicaid is a federal/state government health insurance program for people with low incomes and adults and children with disabilities. Medicare, by contrast, generally covers those 65 or older. For older Americans with low incomes, Medicaid also covers out-of-pocket costs for Medicare.

More than 70 million Americans (about 20% of the U.S. population) receive Medicaid benefits such as health care, home care, costs for nursing homes and other long-term care (which Medicare doesn’t cover). Federal law also requires all state Medicaid programs to cover services including emergency medical transportation, and X-rays and lab work.

Some Medicaid beneficiaries are low-income or disabled people; some are not. About 40% of all children in the country are covered by Medicaid or CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program, created in 1997). Both pay for services such as routine checkups, vaccinations, and hospital stays. Medicaid also covers pregnant people before and after they give birth – more than 40% of all births.

Medicaid is larger than Medicare (which serves about 48 million Americans 65 and older). Medicaid costs less than Medicare (partly due to higher health-care costs for seniors) and less than private insurance. Per capita Medicaid costs are $6,052, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, compared to private insurance per capita costs of $7,752. Medicaid has lower administrative costs (because it doesn’t pay for marketing, or the expenses of denying coverage), and it has the authority to require using less expensive generic drugs and alternatives to questionable procedures with inflated prices.

Medicaid also generally pays health-care providers such as doctors and hospitals less money for services than Medicare or private insurance does. However, it can be more money than providers would get caring for people who are uninsured — which helps hospitals and doctors in small towns and rural areas, where fewer people are insured.

There may be an unfortunate sense that Medicaid is less vital (and less politically important, so conservatives can cut it without concern of blowback at the ballot box), because it mostly serves inner-city people of color.

“But that was never as true as people imagined,” economist Paul Krugman wrote, “and is definitely not true now.”

In fact, Medicaid serves a cross section of the country. About 40% of people under 65 who use Medicaid are white, 30% are Hispanic, 19% are Black, and 1% are Indigenous people. (Federal Medicaid dollars cannot be used to cover immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal permission.)

Most Americans support Medicaid. American adults, including two-thirds of Republicans, say they want Congress to either maintain current Medicaid spending or increase it, according to a February 2025 poll by Kaiser Family Foundation. Another February poll, from Hart Research, showed than 82% of U.S. adults oppose Medicaid cuts, as do 71% of respondents who said they voted for Trump.

Project Labor Agreements in the crosshairs of Trump administration

If unionized workers in the building trades would be asked who would oppose a construction project built on time by skilled workers earning decent wages and benefits without a work stoppage, most would know:

* employers who want to pay lower wages,

* companies who want to get by with fewer benefits,

* contractors without a labor contract, AND

* Big Business interests against unions generally, and specifically resisting the tool that guarantees the positives listed above: Project Labor Agreements (PLAs).

 

A new Trump Executive Order issued on March 14 targets PLAs by rescinding a September Biden Executive order that prioritizes spending for various actions benefiting workers. Biden’s EO sought to provide efficient project delivery by promoting positive labor-management relations through union neutrality in federal infrastructure investment projects and favoring equitable compensation practices and registered apprenticeship programs.

Besides rescinding Biden’s September EO (“Investing in America and Investing in American Workers”), Trump’s edict also revoked Biden’s March 6 order expanding the use of registered apprenticeships, a 2021 order to increase the minimum wage for federal contractors, and the 2023 order “Advancing Workers Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally.”

However, in addition to the labor movement mobilizing to defend PLAs, a new study focusing on Illinois’ use of PLAs provides some solid justification for continuing them.

Authorized under Sections 8(e) and 8(f) of the National Labor Relations Act, a PLA is a contract between a labor union or unions and a government or private entity that needs a construction project done. Before workers are even hired for a project, the two sides negotiate a PLA that sets wages, benefits, working conditions and provisions for resolving labor disputes to prevent work stoppages.

Nationally, PLAs have been used since the 1930s for government and private projects ranging from the Hoover Dam to Disney World, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 upheld its constitutionality.

In Illinois, PLAs have been frequently used since 1992 and became the standard in 2003, when then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued an EO requiring a PLA in state construction projects if it “advances the state’s interests of cost, efficiency, quality, safety, timeliness, skilled labor force, labor stability or the state’s policy to advance minority- and women-owned businesses and minority and female employment.”

The General Assembly codified that requirement in 2011 when lawmakers passed the Project Labor Agreements Act.

White House EOs since the ’90s have varied from recommending PLAs to requiring them. But PLAs have been especially under fire in recent months.

Before inauguration, the AFL-CIO voiced concerns that Project 2025, the lengthy scheme coordinated by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation to remake the U.S. government, could upend labor relations in general and in particular policies that unions have found valuable.

“The labor chapter in Trump’s Project 2025 agenda, written by the chief counsel of Trump’s transition team and the head of Trump’s policy team at the Department of Labor, would eliminate public-sector unions, make it illegal for companies to voluntarily recognize unions, let corporations union-bust in secret and take away unions mid-contract, eliminate the Biden–Harris rules requiring Project Labor Agreements and Davis–Bacon prevailing wages on federally funded construction projects,” the labor federation predicted.

Several of those ideas already have been instituted or attempted, with Congress doing little to impede the dramatic changes, and courts slowly addressing actions’ legality.

Then, on Jan. 9, the non-union Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and dozens of allied business interests wrote Donald Trump – before his inauguration – to ask for an EO essentially weakening or eliminating PLAs. Ten days later, Judge Ryan Holte of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in favor of ABC and other contractors that filed a protest against the federal requirement to use PLAs on large federal building projects. His decision relates only to those employers, but it could  encourage other challenges to PLAs.

The near-term effect of Holte’s ruling may not be a death knell, said St. Louis attorney Chris Bailey.

“I suspect with the current administration reversing the Biden executive order, we’re probably going back to what we had pre-Trump’s first term, which was they may be used sparingly,” he told Construction Dive.

Amid the anti-PLA moves, however, a new report focusing on the state of Illinois’ use of PLAs says PLA foes are incorrect in their objections.

Analyzing seven years of Illinois’ Capital Development Board (CDB) statistics, “The Impacts of Project Labor Agreements on Costs, Competition and Contractors in Illinois,” from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois’ Project for Middle Class Renewal, disproves common complaints from anti-PLA interests.

In Illinois, PLAs have increased bid competition, helped lower construction costs for taxpayers, and improved business for firms owned by veterans, women and people of color, say study authors Bob Bruno and Frank Manzo IV.

“The biggest finding in this report, and one that hadn’t been shown as much in other research or was unclear, is that Project Labor Agreements promote robust competition,” said Manzo, an ILEPI economist, who helped analyze 773 public building projects – 499 with PLAs and 274 without PLAs – from 2017 to 2023.

“The PLAs were linked with a 14% increase in the number of bids submitted by contractors seeking to win public building contracts,” Manzo said.

The report shows that, on average, most PLA project budgets come in 6% below initial projections, and PLAs help stabilize public construction costs regardless of a project’s size, complexity or location.

Further, the report clarifies that – unlike assertions by foes of PLAs – the agreements don’t mandate union labor. Instead, PLAs require the general contractor and subcontractors – whether union or not – to provide the same wage, benefits and working condition set in the agreement. In other words, non-union contractors can bid on PLA-covered projects, but they must follow union-scale wages and benefits.

An Illinois labor leader also stressed the importance of PLA workers existing and developing skills set.

“Unions have apprentices and built-in on-the-job training,” said Tim Drea, President of the Illinois Federation of Labor. “With a Project Labor Agreement, contractors can be confident in the training [that] workers receive because it comes from a joint contractor-union program.”

Manzo and Bruno’s report isn’t alone in its assessment of PLAs as a public-interest positive. Other studies for decades have defended PLAs or refuted opponents’ claims. A Harvard University paper in 2002 said that the increased-costs claim often cited by opponents of PLAs is not based on the final costs, but on bids. A Cornell University study concluded that there is no evidence that PLAs discriminate against employers and workers, limit the pool of bidders, or raise construction costs.

Now, however, the difference in the debate is a more sympathetic (anti-union) ear in the corporate-friendly, Trump-dominated Republican Party, and the GOP’s 53-47 majority in the Senate, and its 220-213 majority in the House.

 

The 30-page report can be read at https://illinoisupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ilepi-pmcr-impacts-of-plas-in-illinois-final.pdf

Today is Workers’ Memorial Day – a solemn remembrance

Who knows what lurks in the dark hearts of those who’d exploit and endanger workers and their organizations? Diminishing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the weeks before Workers Memorial Day April 28 may have seemed a bit much for these power-brokers. So instead of a final, fatal attack, they opted for a piecemeal assault. While hardly stealth, the approach might have an outcome comparable to being “nibbled to death by ducks” (or by billionaires or collaborators or Twentysomethings with some tech savvy).

It still ends up in death.

Eroding OSHA rather than outright annihilation like too many federal workers facing job cuts or the elimination of agencies, the Trump administration has chosen to ignore the statistics.

At press time, the most recent data on workplace casualties, from 2022, shows that more than 3.5 million workers had work-related injuries and illnesses, with 5,486 deaths on the job – up from 2021. The numbers don’t include worker fatalities from occupational diseases, which the AFL-CIO estimates to be 135,000 annually. (The construction industry in particular is risky. Eight different building trades make up 8 of the top 25 list of “Most Dangerous Jobs” – roofers, ironworkers, delivery drivers, crane operators, construction helpers, highway maintenance workers, cement masons and construction workers,)

Already, OSHA for years has had an inadequate corps of inspectors, and though blue states might pick up some of the vital service, the number of federal inspectors – available to cover some 8 million workplaces –

is likely going to get depleted.

And now, Trump’s nominations for OSHA leaders could result in a new OSHA motto: “You’re on your own.”

Trump has named:

* David Keeling as OSHA chief. He formerly worked for Amazon, which has logged more than half of all U.S. warehouse injuries);

* Amanda Wood Laihow as senior counsel. She’s the ex-director of employment policy for the National Association of Manufacturers; and

* Michael Asplen as OSHA's senior policy adviser. He used to run a training institute for Littler Mendelson, a prominent employer law firm.

 

In the field, Elon Musk and his “efficiency” underlings on March 8 announced the termination of leases for 17 OSHA offices nationwide, and they added two more on March 24.

Meanwhile, reports and other documents have been purged from OSHA’s web site, some seemingly due to an outright anti-worker attitude and some because of the administration’s clumsy removal of all DEI-related language, such as diversity, equity, inclusion or gender.

Responding to Trump’s Executive Order, OSHA had to destroy the digital and physical copies of 18 publications on workplace safety, according to an internal February email obtained by the independent Popular Information news site. Censored material includes a Guidance Manual for Hazardous Waste Site Activities, Ergonomics Guidelines for Shipyards, and Best Practices for Protecting EMS Responders. The latter publication was apparently flagged because of the use of “diversity” and “diverse” in text – “a diversity of state-specific certification” and “diverse conditions under which EMS responders could work.”

A fact sheet on Workplace Mental Health also was deleted, presumably because of a sentence saying “People of any age, gender, and background can have thoughts of suicide.”

Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO director of occupational safety and health for 29 years, commented, “The Trump DEI purge is misguided, harmful, wasteful and wrong. It has purged important worker safety and health information and guidance that assists employers, workers, clinicians and safety and health professionals in understanding and identifying and protecting workers from serious hazards and complying with OSHA standards and regulations. The DEI purge makes workplaces unsafe and puts workers in danger.”

Likewise, the status of a rule that became effective Jan. 1, 2024, mandating record-keeping for employers with 100 or more workers is unclear.

An existing rule permitting independent observers such as union job-safety people to accompany OSHA compliance officers on inspections, is at risk, too, according to labor/management lawyers. This so-called walk-around rule, which went into effect May 31, can be valuable because “union experts are likely to find violations which bosses can pressure OSHA to conveniently ‘overlook’,” according to Press Associates reporter Mark Gruenberg. Chamber of Commerce lawsuit in Texas could block the rule.

A proposed rule to ensure employers minimize exposure to hazardous heat probably won’t be enacted.

In a related move – although not in the Labor Department like OSHA, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services – the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) didn’t escape the ax (however temporary OSHA’s reprieve may be).

Trump’s HHS Secretary RFK Jr. plans to eliminate about 875 jobs there, some two-thirds of NIOSH staff.

Part of the CDC since Reagan’s presidency, NIOSH conducts research and investigations, administers programs for nuclear veterans and World Trade Center survivors., certifies respirators, runs the National Firefighter Cancer Registry, studies child labor and mine safety, and maintains 18 Education and Research Centers, including the Great Lakes Center for Occupational Health and Safety at the University of Illinois - Chicago.

The drastic cuts will decimate the nation’s leading occupational safety and health researchers, according to labor reporter Mike Elk.

“Without NIOSH’s ability to investigate outbreaks and certify respirators, more health-care workers, firefighters, construction workers and others will get sick and die,” Elk wrote. “Sooner or later this country will face another pandemic and, as with COVID, workers will be on the front lines without the benefit of research to protect them. More workers will die of heat-related illness, and more miners will succumb to dust-related illness and other deadly hazards.”

AFL-CIO President Lia Shuler added, “Every worker should be able to go home safe and healthy at the end of their shift, but the Trump administration is gutting NIOSH, which will have devastating and irreversible effects on workers’ lives.  

“This action is a gift to corporations that want to slash worker protections to create more profits,” she continued. “It’s an insult to the workers who put their lives on the line at work every day and their families who wait for them to come home. The Trump administration must reverse this anti-worker, anti-health and safety action. We will fight until the work of this critical agency is restored.”

Finally, there’s the possibility of an outright repeal of the law – passed in 1970, during the Nixon administration. The Nullify Occupational Safety and Health Administration Act (“NOSHA”), introduced by U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), proposes the complete elimination of OSHA, using a “states’ rights” argument that private employers and states could take over the duties.

“This bill would be a catastrophic step backward for worker safety in this country,” commented Sally Greenberg of the National Consumers League. “Repealing OSHA would put workers at great risk by dismantling the very protections that have helped reduce workplace injuries and deaths for over 50 years."”

This year’s Workers Memorial Day must remember the sacrifices of the past – and also recognize the threats ahead.

The Other Migration

In the 1980s, cynics and other smart-alecks blasted Peoria’s economic prospects by quipping, “Will the last one to leave Peoria turn out the lights?”

Such a bumper-sticker attitude about Illinois is too common now, as too many media keep repeating the judgments that many people are fleeing the Land of Lincoln.

It’s a wonder there aren’t billboards asking 21^st century residents to leave their keys behind when they abandon the rests of us.

It’s confusing because sources often are ideological or commercial interests with stakes in complaining in general or moving in particular. Also, the assertion can be wrong or incomplete according to reviews by the U.S. Census Bureau and academic studies such as a recent report from the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (ILEPI). Plus, such data is frequently updated to be current and reliable

It's too typical especially for mid- and small-market newsrooms to run with a summary repeating the told, tired refrain. Media stories chronically stress a “mass migration” angle, usually blaming property taxes, crime and housing costs (but very rarely winter).

Sources frequently cited are frankly suspect, such as the “Annual National Moving Study” released by United Van Lines or the yearly “Moving Migration Report” from North American Moving Services / North American Van Lines. That almost seems like the U.S. Surgeon General relying on advice from the tobacco lobby on the effects of cigarette safety, or the EPA seeking counsel on clean air from a coal company.

Also, political voices with vague names can offer conclusions that please their backers. Wirepoints, a conservative think tank that interprets Internal Revenue Service statistics, was used in a commentary on Illinois’ “exodus of residents” by Paul Vallas. The former CEO of school districts in Chicago, Philadelphia and News Orleans who twice unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Chicago, he’s now an “adviser” for the conservative organization Illinois Policy Institute. It promotes conservative points of view in guest essays and issues studies that are backed by contributors ranging from former Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Cato Institute to the Koch and Uihlein families, according to ProPublica and other news organizations.

Pushing perspectives in opinion pages is time-honored discourse, but in news stories it’s close to the unfortunate trend of exaggeration and misinformation, used less to inform or even convince the public of something than to shape people into doubting everything.

Population-loss stories can be incomplete, too, rarely including other factors that affect change, most notably birth rates. For instance, the most recent report from the National Center for Health Statistics says Illinois’ birth rate is 51.8 (an estimate of the number of children born to a group of 1,000 women), and 128,000 annual births. That’s 11% lower than five years earlier, when the birth rate was 57.5 and 144,000 newborns.

In 2022, the Census corrected its data to show Illinois had not lost population, but gained – to 13 million, a 2% undercount.

“This is really good news for Illinois,” Civic Federation President Laurence Msall told the Chicago Sun-Times. “So many of our formulas are based on population.”

The Census inadvertently missed 250,000 residents – akin to omitting Peoria, Fulton and Knox Counties entirely.

A year later, the 2023 UIUC-ILEPI study – a 26-page report titled “A Decade of Illinois’ Migration Patterns” [https://illinoisupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ilepi-pmcr-decade-of-illinois-migration-patterns-final.pdf] – used information from the Census and the Illinois Department of Revenue to conclude, “Reports of Illinois’ population decline have been greatly exaggerated,” ILEPI economist Frank Manzo IV told Robert McCoppin of the Chicago Tribune.

“Data show the Illinois population has been stable,” he added. “Illinois is NOT suffering the mass exodus that some have claimed.”

In the report. Manzo and co-author Bob Bruno, a UIUC Professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations and Director of the Project for Middle Class Renewal, say most people moving from Illinois were from downstate and had incomes low enough to be eligible for government aid, with less than half owning homes (and therefore not paying property taxes). The age group that lost the most residents was those 55 and older.

Bruno and Manzo’s work shows the quality as much as the quantity of people arriving in the state, too. From 2013 to 2022, new residents were better educated and reported higher incomes. The state had a 52% increase in taxpayers earning $100,000 to $500,000, and an 80% uptick in taxpayers earning even more.

“Illinois added more than 200,000 taxpayers last decade,” they say.

Bruno said, “People who move, whether into Illinois or out of Illinois, are more likely to be seeking upward economic mobility, either through job opportunities or educational pursuits. They are less likely to be concerned with things like the estate tax, property taxes, or the corporate income tax.

“It’s going to appeal to businesses, college graduates, people working in emerging sectors,” he continued. “That’s an optimistic view of where the state is heading.”

Last year, the state announced that the Census – which keeps updating its findings to be accurate – conceded another undercount – more than 46,000 people living in group homes. That surpassed the decline of 33,000 the bureau reported months before.

Besides neglected updates, overlooked subjectivity and ignored context, future concerns include whether the Census, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Internal Revenue Service – any federal agencies led by Trump loyalists instead of less political figures and civil servants – will be as impartial and forthcoming as they have been.

What Americans want isn’t what Trump’s doing

More than a crazy numbers game, the last couple of months in the new Trump administration has been chaos without rules, and human beings are affected, not numerals. Still, please excuse the reliance on the numbers to follow.

Locally, at press time, the un-elected, non-governmental “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) lists 24 federal spaces to be closed, including Peoria offices of the Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Attorneys, and U.S. Trustees. Also, the status of TSA workers at the General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport is unknown, as are about 20 jobs at Peoria’s Ag Lab.

Similar cuts, probably illegal if not unconstitutional, continue.

Nationally, the stock market is volatile. The S&P 500 has lost more than $3 trillion in value since its all-time peak in February, Reuters reported; U.S. consumer confidence this winter dropped by 7 points to 98.3 (the largest monthly decline since August 2021), according to the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index; and MarketWatch said this is the worst start to a presidential  term since 2009, when the subprime mortgage crisis hit.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told the Washington Post that “business leaders, CEOs and COOs are nervous, bordering on unnerved, by the policies that are being implemented, how they’re being implemented and what the fallout is. There’s overwhelming uncertainty and increasing discomfort with how policy is being implemented.”

Historian Heather Cox Richardson added, “Government failure, stock market crash, and dictatorial alliances are not popular. People are starting to realize that there is no truth here beyond the desire for personal wealth and power.”

Indeed, few Americans signed up for what’s erupting from Washington, D.C., according to multiple public-opinion polls. We’re not the crazy ones.

What people actually prefer is dramatically different than what President Trump is trying to enact.

Generally, according to polls taken by CNN, Fox News, Gallup, NPR, Pew, Quinnipiac, YouGov and others, between 60% and 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, term limits for the U.S. Supreme Court, and legal abortion; 70% to 80% of us back labor unions, a higher minimum wage, student debt relief, higher taxes on the wealthy, money out of politics, and we believe the climate change is real; and more than 80% want free pre-Kindergarten and more gun control laws.

Yet, Trump is somehow emboldened by an imaginary “mandate” (his vote total was 49.8% compared to the 50.2% tallied by Kamala Harris combined with independent candidates), plus the Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook, various compliant billionaires, and spineless people on Capitol Hill who in the 1940s might have been called “collaborators.”

However, only 35% of American adults say Trump is “honest and trustworthy” (Washington Post-Ipsos)

Here are other examples from polls in recent weeks:

* 82% of Americans favor deporting undocumented immigrants – but that’s if they’ve been convicted of violent crimes (AP-NORC).

* Just 29% of us support eliminating federal jobs (Associated Press-NORC).

* 52% of U.S. adults think Trump has gone too far in using presidential powers (CNN).

* 67% of us think cutting USAID funds will lead to more illness and death in low-income countries (KFF Health).

* Only 13% support Elon Musk’s influence over the executive branch (YouGov), and just 12% think billionaires should be advising the White House (AP-NORC).

* 28% favor changing the Constitution to end birthright citizenship (AP-NORC).

* In Trump’s bizarre foreign affairs ideas, 60% of Americans have “no interest” in taking over Canada (Angus Reid Institute); just 29% are OK with seizing Panama’s Canal (Reuters-Ipsos) and even fewer, 16%, support grabbing Greenland (also Reuters-Ipsos); and 68% view Russia as “unfriendly” or an “enemy” (NBC News|SurveyMonkey) and 52% of us support Ukraine in its war with Russia (CBS/YouGov).

* Just 20% support quitting the Paris Climate Agreement (AP-NORC), and a whopping 55% prefer alternate energy sources such as wind and solar to expanding oil and gas production (AP VoteCast).

* Concerning Medicaid, 40% of us want the funding to remain the same, with 42% wanting it to be increased.

* 83% of us opposed pardoning those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection (Washington Post-Ipsos).

* only 23% of us support restricting women from military combat (Scripps News/Ipsos).

* 72% of Americans view the Postal Service favorably (Pew).

 

Ryan Mac, who co-authored “Character Limit,” a book about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, has said that creating confusion is part of the point, asking, “What happens when there is unfettered capitalism that allows people to accumulate this much money and this much power?”

The American people aren’t the ones who are unhinged.