Arlington Heights resident Elizabeth Bauer has begun the process of circulating petitions for the Republican nomination for the Illinois State House of Representatives for District 53, which encompasses portions of Arlington Heights, Rolling Meadows, Mount Prospect, Des Plaines, Palatine, and Schaumburg.
Bauer is a 29-year resident of the district. Her three children attended Rolling Meadows High School, and Elizabeth and her husband Martin have been deeply involved in the community through a variety of volunteering, primarily through their local church.
By profession, she is an actuary, having worked in pension consulting and more recently in the healthcare sector. In addition to her undergraduate and graduate degrees in history, she recently earned a Master’s in Applied Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has had a lifetime interest in public policy and has written extensively about retirement issues as a senior contributor at Forbes. She has also written on a variety of topics at her personal “Jane the Actuary” website and blog, as an occasional op-ed contributor at the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere, and she is particularly knowledgeable about the fiscal challenges facing Illinois, including the state of the public sector pensions and their serious underfunding problems.
Bauer writes,
“Illinois’ government is chock-full of people with good intentions, who love the state and its people. But good intentions aren’t enough. The state’s economy is stagnant, we’re losing not just residents but disproportionately taxpayers to other states. We’ve created dangerous dependencies on gambling and cannabis for tax revenue, and the state’s own 5-year projections anticipate billions in annual deficits. This presents a clear and present danger not just for today’s residents, but more importantly for our children and the next generation.
Yet the General Assembly recessed in May without solving its most pressing immediate problem, the so-called Transit Cliff, and at the same time it’s expected that in the veto session, the state will pass legislation to increase taxes by a needlessly high $1.5 billion in order to remedy a $700 million shortfall.
We’ve also seen repeatedly that bills get passed without regard to their consequences. This past spring, the legislature passed and Gov. Pritzker signed a pension sweetener for the Chicago Police and Fire pensions which brings down their funded status from 23% to 18%, based on the false assurances that it was required by federal law. Before that, the program funding Medicaid-like benefits for immigrants without legal status was originally claimed to cost $2 million a year by its supporters, but from 2020 to 2024 the state spent $1.6 billion.
Even in small ways, our legislators have a practice of passing or proposing legislation that may have aimed at being kind and caring but has small or large hidden costs or harms. Rep. Grasse herself sponsored bills which would have created ‘safe injection sites’ for drug users; would have decriminalized the use of psychedelic mushrooms; would have mandated that insurance companies cover retainers, vitamins, and allergen-preventive baby food supplements; would have given college students academic credit for serving as election judges; would have empowered the state to cap the prices of prescription drugs, and more – not to mention her plans to legalize assisted suicide and give local school districts the ability to control homeschooling families.”
Bauer expects to rely on grassroots local support rather than PAC, party, union or corporate donors.
For more information, please visit bauerfor53.com.