Gov. Jim Edgar traveled to Washington D.C. this week to see how the train looked.

And although he was smiling in front of the cameras, the teetotaling governor might have been wishing for one on the rocks.

Back home, similar feelings were racing through state government officials’ minds. When the train pulls into Springfield, there will be too many cars and not enough passengers.

Meanwhile, the majority of Illinois’ citizenry—voters and non-voters alike—were still wandering around in the dark.

The train is President George Bush’s budget and its effect on Illinois. The cars are the increasing mandates passed down from Capitol Hill. The emptiness, in more ways than one, is the lack of money.

People want their services, but they do not want higher taxes. What most fail to realize is they get pinched in the long run.

Bush is continually under fire from the big-time right-wingers for not being conservative enough.

The one place it did not come in is Ronald Reagan’s push for decentralization. Bush is passing the Reaganite torch by increasing states’ burden with programs without increasing federal dollars.

The effect is quite simple. The train helps Republicans keep the White House and state officials scrambling.

It works because legislators really only do two kinds of decision making: the policy kind and the political kind.

Political decisions are taken care of first. If the politician isn’t going to have her seat the next term, she can’t get anything done.

And this makes policy decisions near impossible because they affect political decisions. Politicians work to get elected before they work on policy. The two decisions usually run opposite each other.

Bush says no new taxes. Knowing many people gauge federal taxes from what they pay to Uncle Sam, Bush quietly raises the more palatable kind: sin taxes.

Knowing this is going to happen, state legislators scurry. Because taxes were an incredible issue during the past decade, presidents made a political decision.

They assimilated with the little guy. They echoed Joe Sixpack’s frustrations with more taxes. They vowed to change.

The only change made was to shift the bad-guy image to state officials. By sending an empty train, Bush lets states answer to the public’s cry of “Don’t cut our services and don’t raise our taxes.”

Even though incumbents continue their overwhelming grip as office-holders, the ground is shaking. Ask Neil Hartigan or Pat Quinn.

So what will happen is Illinois legislators will make political decisions. Extending the band-aid surcharge is easy. Edgar won on it.

But cutting programs, raising taxes and dealing with property tax reform isn’t. State legislators will send the train back to D.C. explaining they have to deal with reapportionment, environmental issues and the like.

In the end, taxpayers lose. It’s a roundtrip ticket until it becomes politically easy to do the right thing.