RE: Isn't it closer to the truth that things are improving in the economy?
Saving 22 million dollars is a drop in the bucket of the nearly 20 trillion dollars that the USA is in debt (Source: www.usdebtclock.org). The Federal Reserve and their secret shareholders are the ones who actually rule the monetary system.
The GDP of the USA (according to worldbank.org) was 18.6 trillion dollars in 2016. Effectively this means that if all the economic drive of the USA was put into paying off debt for one year (think of any purchase anyone makes going directly to taxes, and 100% of all paychecks going directly to taxes too), then the debt would still not be paid because of the Federal Reserve and unscrupulous politicians. Obviously, this is impossible to do, which is a good thing because the ramifications of putting such a policy into practice would be disastrous.
Real estate taxes would increase overall, but the recent news (especially for Illinois) is that the state can't pass a budget, and therefore can't pay anybody any money.
As for unemployment, shadowstats.com has disagreements with the official numbers, which can indicate why wages aren't rising. For instance, if one had to take on 2 minimum wage full time jobs in order to pay the bills, would that be counted as 200% employment? If so, then you can have one unemployed person for every person who has 2 jobs, and end up at 0% unemployment.
Have you ever listened to Catherine Austin-Fitts, a former HUD head, on the US black budget? She talks about how all the the bailout money from 2008 went somewhere and could be recoverable with criminal prosecution of the banksters. She also says a huge amount of money has been stolen from the government and is in the "black budget" for the US. That money is being spent in lots of space development. It seems like there is a lot of recoverable money if prosecutions occurred.