Week of June 1st, 2009
The scheduled adjournment date for the 2009 Spring Session of the Illinois General Assembly has passed. Actually, we were on the floor of the House when the official deadline came as the House was in session well past midnight on May 31st. As the deadline passed, the only version of a budget that was sent to the Governor is a “doomsday” version which funds most state supported programs at about fifty percent of lest year’s levels. Clearly, this budget will not be the final version and represents a huge failure for the majority party.
Just prior to the passage of the “doomsday” version, House Members were provided with the opportunity to increase state revenue by passing a “temporary” income tax increase. Of course, the definition of “temporary” used in this description is the purely political one. While a couple of different income tax increase proposals were floated, the one that came forward for a vote was SB2252. This would have increased the state income tax by fifty percent, from three percent to four and a half percent. This proposal only gained 42 of the 60 votes needed for passage.
I voted against the proposal. The biggest problem I have with any income tax proposal at this time is that we have not yet dealt with spending cuts that are needed and we have not passed reforms to control state spending. There was not a sincere attempt to look at the budget and reduce spending. Instead, there was just another attempt to raise revenue for basic operations spending. That is exactly the approach that resulted in the fiscal mess that we currently are experiencing.
During the seven years that I have been privileged to serve as a State Representative, I have watched as state spending has increased from about 50 billion to about 57 billion dollars. During that time, we have tried to satisfy the spending increase with a series of very questionable budget techniques. There was the pension raid scheme, record borrowing, raiding of dedicated funds (including the road fund) and other one time revenue sources that were revenue sources for increasing spending that was permanent. That type of strategy was doomed to failure and now the day of reckoning has come.
Over the past six to seven years, I have warned this day was coming. I looked back over articles that I wrote during the past six years related to the budget and every year there is a consistent theme and that theme is spend, spend, spend without any regard for how we would pay for all the expansion of programs related to health care, for example. Everybody would love to live in the world that the majority party has created. That is a world in which one could fill the shopping cart to the brim without thinking about the fact that there is a checkout lane. Well, we are at the checkout lane and we do not have money to pay the bill.
Where do we go from here? Well, I think we need to start to solve the problem by facing our biggest failure related to how we arrived at this point. Our biggest failure has been the complete lack of a responsible approach to budgeting. First, we need to STOP digging the hole deeper. We cannot expect to get out of a hole that we keep digging deeper. Secondly, we had better recognize that the strategies that have been used in budgeting which have resulted in this mess are wrong. Unrestrained spending that goes beyond our ability to use a reliable and sustainable revenue source to fund new programs must end. We cannot spend more than we take in and expect that we will not find ourselves in the same situation moving forward.
The fact that we are being forced to take a close look at state spending is not a bad thing. Being forced to prioritize our spending desires is actually a good thing. It will take hard work and it will take saying NO at times. Government cannot be all things to all groups and all people. Spending reform should start with government itself. For example, why do we have several state planes flying officials all over the state at taxpayers’ expense? Our former governor was roundly criticized for using these state planes. While our current governor does not use the planes to the same extent, the same waste exists. Blagojevich was only a symptom of the disease. We need to treat the sickness.
Speaking of reform, this past week revealed the weakness of the commission set up by the Speaker to make recommendations to the General Assembly regarding reform in Illinois government. Back when the special committee was set up, you will remember that the Speaker made sure that the majority party had a majority on the “reform” committee. At the time, I stated that this was an obvious attempt to control what “reforms” were pushed and what reforms were blocked. Well, last week the political control of that special committee became evident when the independent reform commission’s proposal on campaign finance reform was replaced with the Madigan controlled committee recommendation. The result is that there is really no reform in campaign finance reform. Anybody that claims otherwise is drinking the Speaker’s Kool- Aid. The Chicago tribune has even called the campaign finance reform measure worse than the current system. In addition, the “fumigation” bill that was supposed to deal with employment problems which occurred under Blagojevich and Ryan did not pass in the Senate. More business as usual folks and they will keep it up until the voters finally say enough is enough!
It is likely that in the next few weeks we will return to Springfield to deal with the continued dysfunction that exists in government. Anybody that believed former Governor Blagojevich was the sole source of dysfunction within the majority party hopefully has their eyes opened now. He was a convenient excuse for quite some time and turned out to be a great punching bag for the Speaker and the majority party. However, it should be clear to all by now that this dysfunction runs deep.
I will work to help find solutions that include responsible ways to solve systemic problems related to budget and ethics. I am open to all possible solutions as long as certain responsible budget principles are followed and we take care of our most vulnerable citizens while eliminating waste. I am not for huge tax increases of any kind before we work out basic guidelines to ensure responsibility.
I will review other legislation that has passed both Chambers in the coming weeks and keep you updated. For more information, visit my website (www.peopleforeddy.com)
You can e-mail me at reddyunit1@aol.com or call me at 217-558-1040 or 618-563-4128. Of course you can write to me as well- P.O. Box 125, Hutsonville, IL 62433. Last week, I also started twittering comments live at www.tweetillinois.org