Appearing on Mancow Muller's WLS morning show last Friday, Gov. Pat Quinn got a drubbing about his proposal to raise the state income tax rate by 1.5 percent.  Mancow made some reasonable points ("I'd feel okay about it if the roads were good, if the schools were good, if it wasn't so violent") and some not so reasonable ones ("How about we cut some of the stupidity, some of the liberal programs we have for everything and everybody?").  But the striking thing about the exchange was Quinn's ineptitude in selling his plan. His pitch boiled down to these three points: 1) the state needs to pay the bills left by Blagojevich, 2) if we don't pay the bills, state workers will lose jobs, and 3) the higher personal exemption will result in tax cuts for many Illinoisans.  Listen:

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Notice how towards the end, rather than attempt to explain the state's fiscal problems substantively, Quinn seeks shelter by bringing up his personal paycut and the issue of veterans health care.

Yet the central question posed by Mancow is the one Quinn needs to face squarely: "What am I paying for?"  As Senate President John Cullerton said last week, the leadership in Springfield must make sure taxpayers have the answer:

"But in the Chicago media market, which is 80 percent of the state, people don’t know who we are or what we do. They just say, 'cut the waste and reform the ethics.' That’s fine but there’s $22 billion that we spend on school districts and nursing homes and hospitals and dentists. And they don’t want us to cut that.

"They want us to cut apparently the $6 billion that would be for the operation of state government. We could save $1.5 billion by not funding the prison system. That’d be one way of doing it. But we’d have to let all the prisoners out. And so that’s probably not a good idea. That’s the thing. We have to go through and educate people on what the state government really does."

Speaking at a Community Renewal Society event on April 19, Center for Tax and Budget Accountability director Ralph Martire gave a pretty good breakdown of the Illinois' state budget.  It'd be nice to see Quinn similarly explain and defend the state's spending priorities. Keep in mind that Martire prefaced this primer with the argument that the state needs to find a way to add $3 billion to the public education system. Watch it:

Martire backs a longstanding proposal that would raise that $3 billion for education by doing four things: 1) increase the income tax rate by two percentage points, 2) expand the sales tax base to include services, 3) provide targeted tax relief to families making $56,000 or less, and 4) lessen the property tax burden. As Martire told us last week, if the legislature were to pass something along these lines, he'd expect the revenue to at first be eaten up by the state's outstanding bills and pension obligations.  But once all that is settled, education would begin to benefit.

This plan stands apart from Quinn's because the taxpayer gets something in return for the higher income tax rate -- specifically, a competitive school system and property tax relief.  That latter issue is an important one, as Mayor Daley told WLS' Bill Cameron over the weekend:

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Quinn, on the other hand, has a weak answer when asked "What am I paying for?"  His goal -- simply to balance the budget -- is modest and noble.  But here's the catch: He might find more support for raising income taxes if the new revenue were going towards something more ambitious.