Brandon Johnson is the mayor of Chicago, a leftist who rose from obscurity to high office in 2023. His principal backer is the teachers' union. He faced a $1.2bn budget deficit, equivalent to a fifth of the city's operating budget, triggered in part by the winding down of pandemic-related federal support.
Mr Johnson proposed reintroducing a $21 per employee monthly "head tax" on any business employing more than 100 workers and substantially raising a sales tax on services like software paid mostly by businesses. He framed this as asking "large corporations and the ultra-wealthy to chip in more". The city council finance committee voted down his proposals.
Mr Johnson is notably unpopular. A generation ago Chicago's mayors could usually bully aldermen to adopt whatever they proposed; under the two Richard Daleys budgets often passed unanimously. He lacks such clout. J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, opposes his tax plans, as do most businesses.
Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have much of anything to do with it.