Friday, February 2, 2018

Biss Asked “Can People Trust You Not to Change Your Opinion On Other Things?” at Crain’s Ed Board

Chicago, IL – While meeting with the Crain’s editorial board today, Dan Biss gave a flailing response to questions on his 2013 bill to cut pension benefits for 467,000 Illinoisans.

In a heated back and forth, Biss was pressed to answer an important question: “If you can so completely change your opinion on something you spent so much time and energy on, what can people trust you not to change your opinion on, on other things?”

WATCH:

“Dan Biss is flailing as he continues to be pressed on his unconstitutional efforts to cut pension benefits for 467,000 downstate teachers, university workers, and state employees,” said Pritzker communications director Galia Slayen. “Biss can try and ramble and deflect now, but this is someone who needed the Supreme Court to step in before he ‘learned his lesson’ that working families deserve the pensions that were promised to them.”

TRANSCRIPT:

If the Supreme Court hadn’t objected, if there was not a legal reason, a constitutional reason to do this, would you come back to something like that? Is it appropriate, or do you also have a moral objection now?

No, I think the Supreme Court was right. I think the Supreme Court was right. Um, I think that these pensions were promised to people, and they were told they were promised, and they were told that it’s a guarantee. And, I don’t think it’s appropriate then to go back and change it, and I…um…like I said, that was a long learning process for me, and I wish I’d learned that lesson differently. But I think that it’s a really, really important lesson.

Why this total mindset transition?

Well I think you have to ask the question: was the Supreme Court right or wrong?

What I guess I’m asking is a character question: if you could so completely change your opinion of something you spent so much time and energy on, what can people trust you not to change your opinion on, on other things?