SPRINGFIELD – With seven days left in the spring legislative session, House Republican Leader Tony McCombie said at a capitol press briefing today that there appears to be no urgency, no discussion of any sort of structural reform, and no solutions coming from the other side of the aisle as the deadline approaches.
McCombie said “We’re looking at the largest budget proposal in Illinois history with no action whatsoever on the real problems that we have here in Illinois. Structural reform is the only path forward for us to grow our state. There are several things that are approaching this end of the year that we really need to be talking about to do just that, grow our state, reform our state.
The minority leader went on to say “Illinois should be thriving, a thriving state and one of the top in the nation. We’ve got the third largest city. We’ve got top tier agriculture and industry. We have the second largest rail system. We have 32 Fortune 500 companies. Not too long ago, we had 36. You saw under Pritzker, after taking office, you saw Boeing, Caterpillar, Tyson Foods, and Citadel walk out of this state due to leadership.”
According to Deputy House Republican Leader Norine Hammond (R-Macomb) Governor Pritzker and the Democratic majority are preparing to pass the largest budget in the state’s history, $55.2 billion, nearly $2 billion more than last year, which was also a record-breaking year for an Illinois budget. Since Governor Pritzker took office in 2019. She added that estate spending has increased by more than $15 billion and the state has gone from a $40 billion budget to a $55 plus billion budget, a 38% increase in spending.
Hammond added that information was leaked that the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Services was receiving federal reimbursement for drug rebates for Medicaid recipients which is against federal policy and now Illinois has to pay back those funds.
Deputy House Republican Leader Ryan Spain (R-Peoria) said the legislature has a great track record of using this time, squandering time for many months, and using the waning hours of a legislative session to enact gigantic changes that have real-world consequences for taxpayers. Spain said he expects what will be heard over the next week or so are a whole bunch of obfuscations of the truth, “Illinois is facing a billion dollar budget deficit. Why is that? It’s because our state has not been growing for year after year after year. And we certainly aren’t keeping pace of other states in the Midwest to facilitate economic growth. But that’s not what you’ll hear from the majority party.”
Spain explained “The Democrats have been telling the rate payers of Illinois that your energy bills are going to increase, and it’s the fault of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) or PJM Interconnection through a capacity auction that they have every year. That’s a great comfort to our constituents, right? As they see these price spikes and shocks on their summer utility bills, Democrats want to insert language into their bills that say, no, it’s someone else’s fault and not ours.”