There’s an old adage in politics: Watch what politicians do, NOT what they say.

Illinois’ Democratic Governor J. B. Pritzker gave a fire-breathing State of the State speech last week, in which he compared Donald Trump’s “authoritarian playbook” to the rise of the Nazis.  A thrilled Rachel Maddow aired that whole section on MSNBC.

The part she didn’t run was where Pritzker surprised many by not raising taxes and even reining in some spending, including nixing a health-care program for undocumented adult aliens.

“We have to live within our means. If you come to the table looking to spend more — I’m going to ask you where you want to cut,” Pritzker lectured the liberal legislature. “Economic growth is an essential ingredient that allows us to move beyond a challenging budget year like this one.”

Democrats sat on their hands when they heard that part of Pritzker’s speech. But other observers cheered his new pragmatism. “A budget free at last from tax increases should begin to send a message to job creators that the state’s leaders understand they’re in a competition with other states for business investment,” wrote the Chicago Tribune.

That message is necessary. A new report by Moody’s Analytics notes that Illinois’ unemployment rate is 5.3 percent, well above the national average of 4.1 percent. Moody’s attributed the state’s mounting problems to “deep-rooted fiscal problems such as mounting pension obligations and a shrinking tax base.”

Pritzker’s new stance represents an attempt to pull back from the fiscal abyss the state faces. Margaret Thatcher once noted that “socialism always fails because it eventually runs out of other people’s money.” It’s just possible that Governor Pritzker has finally discovered the reality of that observation.