By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner, includes “… In mid-2020, shutdowns ravaged the state’s tax base, Senate President Don Harmon asked for a $42 billion bailout from Congress and the state projected billions in multiyear budget shortfalls. What changed so dramatically in such a short period of time? Ignore the claims by Illinois lawmakers of their heroic acts of ‘balanced budgets,’ ‘fiscal discipline’ and the like. … Credit, instead, the massive $138 billion in federal funds from the multiple COVID-19 relief and stimulus packages … that are now flooding Illinois’ public and private sectors.”