ICYMI: Gov. Pritzker Joins Raging Moderates Podcast with Jessica Tarlov

CHICAGO — Governor Pritzker appeared on the Raging Moderates podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on improving affordability for working families, protecting Medicaid and critical federal programs from Republican cuts, how to make government more efficient, and the role of kindness in public service. Governor Pritzker also discussed the importance of investing in public education, celebrated Illinois students’ recent accomplishments, and highlighted his proposal to ban personal cell phones in classrooms.

Listen to the interview on Spotify here, Apple Podcasts here, or YouTube here. See below for highlights:

On making government more efficient and delivering critical services:

“Yeah, and I think it's okay to talk about the inefficiencies. ​ I've seen it. I was in business before I became governor. Now I'm in charge of a government. And I can tell you that there are inefficiencies everywhere and, you know, waste, fraud, and abuse, as people like to talk about it. It exists for sure. And we're always trying to root it out.”

“But unlike, you know, using a chainsaw, the way that Elon Musk talks about, and just, you know, cutting programs entirely. Instead, what you need to do, and this is the hard work of governing, by the way, is you need to go into the agencies and task the people running the agencies with finding the areas of inefficiency and ineffectiveness.”

“And I want to focus on that last part, because effectiveness is the important part of these programs. People need health care. They want efficiency, but most of all, they want to deliver it effectively to them. And that involves efficiency. So I say that because delivering, making our institutions work is really important for re-instilling trust that people have in government, because I get it. People don't trust government. And again, I came from outside of government.”

“I can tell you, when I saw, for example, that in Illinois, when I showed up, my predecessor, the Republican who preceded me, had left 140,000 Medicaid applications that they hadn't looked at. And they were basically just delaying giving people their health care because he didn't want to pay for it.”

“That's ineffective and inefficient. You need people to get health care, otherwise they're going to end up in an emergency room. It'll cost you a lot more. And then there are a whole lot of things that happen in government that take too long. And so we've got to just acknowledge those things and recognize that, of course, there's inefficiencies. People are all excited about, oh, a department of government efficiency. That sounds great. But I have to say, not if they're taking away the things that really matter to you, like child care, like meals on wheels, like Medicaid.”

On investing in public education:

“Invest in it. Let's begin with that. But also, I'd like to just challenge at least a couple of notions you put forward. The NAEP scores, which are the English, the reading and math scores that are done nationally, these are the tests that are given ​ all across the nation, just came out. And our eighth graders in Illinois came in second in the nation. Number one was Massachusetts. Number two was Illinois. Our eighth graders in math came in fifth in the nation. So we're actually doing pretty well. I'm talking about the state of Illinois is doing reasonably well. There are always challenges in big cities versus other places like suburbs, for example. But that doesn't mean we got to give up on those kids or give up on investing in those schools.”

“But they do need to be managed well. And we do need to attract teachers. We don't have enough teachers. And we're going to need more. And we have put in programs I have to attract teachers to provide, you know, signing bonuses to help them get housing and so on. And we have the ability to attract them because we pay reasonably well. If you want to be a teacher in Chicago or anywhere in the state of Illinois. So it's an attractive place to teach.”

“But we got to invest in these schools. We're not fully invested in the state of Illinois. We're trying really hard. You know, I inherited a fiscal situation that was terrible in 2019 when I came into office. And, you know, we've got nine credit upgrades and we've finally got a rainy day fund. And we've increased funding for education by more than $2 billion since I came into office. And we're continuing that with the proposed budget I put in place.”

“But, you know, the fact is that our kids are worth investing in. And I would say the wraparound services that you need for their families is also hugely important in order for our kids to get ahead. Last point I'll make on this, early childhood education.”

“I've been involved in this arena for 25 years, long before I was governor, is perhaps the most important arena for us to invest in. You know, it's a universal preschool, but it's also, you know, everything from early you know, everything from early intervention services, which can make the difference between a child growing up, you know, with challenges and autism their whole life, or perhaps being able to actually join a classroom in a public school and graduate and go to college. Those early intervention investments make a big difference.”

On his proposal to ban personal cell phones from classrooms:

“We need to, first we need kids to be focused in class. We need teachers to not have to fight the fight with students about their devices in class. And if you ask teachers and ask most parents, and I have done that, I've talked to an awful lot of people about this, most parents will tell you they would rather their kids didn't have those devices in class. They do want them to have them in school though. They want, in other words, it's okay with them if it's in their locker or if they check them in outside the classroom. They want their kids though to be able to focus in class and they want their teachers to be able to focus in class and they want their teachers to be able to focus on their kids in class. So parents, generally speaking, very much in favor.”

“How do we take care of the problem where their parents, remember there are some kids who actually need to have a device because there are a variety of reasons why, but one is just anxiety. So that's just one example. But what we've done is proposed a policy where the schools get to work on their individual policies, but they're designed to have exceptions. Again, they're also health needs. I mentioned a mental health need and anxiety, but there are other health needs, diabetes, for example. And we've got automatic readers for people who have diabetes. So these are all things that are taken into account in this policy. Broadly speaking, though, this is hugely popular. There's just no doubt about it. ​ And it's the right thing to do.”

“And I have kids who graduated just two, three, four years ago, two of them from high school. And I went and asked them about how distracting is it? And also, did your friends experience cyberbullying? You know, in classes? And the answer is yes. That there was that going on just in a single classroom. People are getting bullied on their device. So I think the trade-off is actually a really positive one. Just leave the device outside the door. You know, there's a way to lock them up. And you can get it when you leave class. And for the most part, it's not going to be a problem. And schools get to make those decisions for themselves.”

On what makes him rage:

“One thing that makes me rage is … I watch our public officials and what's happening in our political life, and it's like people have forgotten how to be kind. And it seems to me that the whole purpose of public service is to deliver what people need to make their lives better. That seems like a part of the answer to the question of how can you be kind. And we ought to be kind to one another. And what makes me rage is to look at the political arena and see that that seems to have gone out the window. And so it drives me crazy. It's not something, I'm not a person who will rage in public. But you know, you saw the speech that I gave about the death of a constitutional republic. And obviously, my experience, my own family escaped the pogroms in Ukraine. I helped to build a Holocaust museum. So you can imagine that watching our constitutional democracy be torn apart is enraging to me.”

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