By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
State lawmakers have sent Gov. J.B. Pritzker a $50.6 billion 2024 budget for him to sign.
For the most part, it’s the same old story that’s played out for the last two decades. Little time for lawmakers to review thousands of pages of line items. No tax relief, just more and more spending. Another unbalanced budget. Billions more in pension debt pushed into the future. And, of course, a salary hike for lawmakers.
Unsurprisingly, it’s all been accompanied by good old-fashioned back slapping by Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Chris Welch about how they’ve once again “balanced” the budget, made significant “investments,” and prioritized those most in need. But look beyond the rhetoric and it’s clear the latest budget perpetuates what’s made Illinois an extreme outlier in pension debts, property taxes, joblessness and out-migration.
Three good examples below – on pensions, Medicaid for illegal immigrants and the upcoming AFSCME contract – capture the ongoing budget gimmickry in Illinois:
1. Pensions shorted yet again
The budget is unbalanced by at least $4.4 billion. The state’s actuaries calculate that Illinois’ five state-run pension funds require $15.4 billion in state contributions for 2024. But lawmakers, as usual, will contribute only the statutory requirement of about $10.9 billion. We detailed the $4.4 billion shortfall back in November when we reported that Illinois’ officially-reported pension debts had once again jumped back to the $140 billion level.
It’s the same pension game that’s gone on for decades and precisely how Illinois ended up with the biggest pension debt and lowest credit rating in the country. Keep increasing benefits to satisfy the unions and let future lawmakers figure out how to fund the shortfalls. (See: Illinois Pensions – Over Promised & Overgenerous)
2. Medicaid for illegals funding gap
The $1.1 billion cost for Medicaid benefits for illegal immigrants reportedly caused the biggest holdup on the budget. Lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to handle the massively expensive line item and in the end, lawmakers punted on the issue instead of addressing the problem head on.
To get to a “balanced” budget, they reduced the line item for the program to $550 million and gave Gov. Pritzker “emergency rulemaking authority” to reduce program costs from the estimated $1.1 billion. It’s hard to see how Pritzker pulls off those cost reductions given the immense pressure from pro-immigrant groups and the questionable legality of those emergency powers.
And the above assumes the original $1.1 billion cost estimate is correct. It’s impossible to know how many illegal immigrants will end up in Illinois expecting healthcare coverage and what the final costs will be.
3. A more expensive AFSCME contract
The state’s contract with AFSCME ends on June 30, 2023 – another expense that lawmakers didn’t account for in the new fiscal year. As Sen. Win Stoller noted in his address to the General Assembly: “that’s $200-300 million dollars not included in this budget.”
Illinois state workers were already some of the most-well paid in the county, with a total compensation package totaling near $110,000, four years ago when Gov. Pritzker largely granted AFSCME’s contract demands.
Today, count on the union to ask for big raises to make up for the recent record rate of inflation. They’re also sure to ask for increased health insurance benefits and other employment perks. Wirepoints will do a deep dive on the details once contract negotiations are in full swing.
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We’d be remiss to not comment on the important claims made by the governor related to some “improvements” to the state’s finances. They include several credit rating upgrades, some increased budget contributions to both pensions and the state’s rainy day fund, as well as the continued reduction in Illinois’ unpaid bill backlog. They’re all true and, everything else equal, they’re good news.
But what the governor consistently leaves out is that virtually none of those improvements have come from actions taken by him or the legislature, as we’ve repeatedly reported. There have been no spending or structural pension reforms. Instead, the short-term “improvements” are due to the ballooning state tax coffers that resulted from the nearly $200 billion in covid-related bailouts given to Illinois’ private and public sectors over the past three years.
A final note about this budget. For all the talk of priorities and “investments,” the state’s three leaders willingly kept an extension of Illinois’ only scholarship program for K-12 low-income, working-class students out of the budget bill.
Pritzker, Welch and Harmon have killed school choice in Illinois at a time when states around the country are making their own programs universal.
This budget is a perfect summation of their priorities. Unions, and even non-citizens, win out over students and taxpayers.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Chicago pensions nearly insolvent, yet lawmakers look to boost public safety pension benefits
- Illinois lawmakers face two choices on Invest in Kids Act: support schoolchildren or support teachers unions
- Disgraceful Illinois budget process on full display as even a draft hidden from rank and file lawmakers in both parties
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Thank you Wirepoints for the report. At least someone cares about the taxpayer. Now, will any of Chicago’s local television news stations, the Tribune, or Sun-Times do similar digging? Probably not – example: the Sun-Times article about the $50.4 Billion dollar budget noted that it passed with no Republican support in part because it didn’t spend enough. The lack of questioning by the press is ironic because when one reads the reporting on the budget it is all about increased spending here, increased spending there, more spending, more spending, more spending. Do honestly none of them read their own reporting… Read more »
The more the three mentioned in the article, the more it sounds like a New Orleans jazz funeral march. Happy, jazzy, fun celebration of death. Enjoy yourself, Illinois!
People of Illinois, complain all you want if it makes you feel better. Just about all of you can leave, you just haven’t reached your breaking point yet. I understand. I also used to be lazy and stubborn. So, stay in Illinois as long as you want. Your headlines are a source of amusement for those of us residing in red states. The more you complain, the more we laugh. Oh, and by the way, maybe some of you really aren’t so upset with PPF but are mad at yourself for putting up with all the Illinois nonsense. Stay put… Read more »
They are not mad at me HJ. They are just jealous that pensioners have planned for their retirement and they are upset that even if they get enough people to join their political mob, the courts won’t let them steal from pensioners. You hear them complain how pensions are better than SS or that they don’t have a pension so why should public employees and their jealousy rears its ugly head and they lose it. Most of these people have no intention of leaving Illinois. If they did they wouldn’t be so upset. They would simply decide to leave. Instead,… Read more »
Not Jealous, I have moral character that does not allow me to steal earnings from unborn children. I guess I cannot say the same about you. I am not worried about it as I am getting out before the real schitt hits the fan, and it will. Soon outflows will far exceed inflows of cash. The main resident in the Chitty will be uneducated CPS graduates and poor illegal immigrants. Run for your life when the money runs out and it will. By the way PPF I am taking with me over $250,000 per year of economic activity. Much of… Read more »
Moral character? What a joke. Teachers, police and firefighters were told that if they worked for x number of years and reached y age then they would have a check for the rest of their life. Now you think they are the thieves for cashing checks that are owed to them because you and your high moral character don’t want your taxes to go up. It’s not the employees fault that the people the voters put in office didn’t set aside enough money and now future taxpayers will have to continue to pay for it. That’s for all the voters… Read more »
Now that you have ethics, politics, and finance all figured out, maybe you could devote some time helping ISBE figure out how to teach kids to read. Seems like there wasn’t enough time for that in the last 50 years; union members were busy with politics and finance.
Why don’t you figure it out? Quit expecting others to solve problems for you.
I don’t expect others to solve my problems. I do expect others to perform the services for which they were paid a salary, and are now collecting a generous pension.
You asked me to devote my time to solving a problem that you want solved. That’s not my problem so you should figure it out. Nor is it anyone collecting a pension as they have already performed their agreed upon service. They owe you nothing. They didn’t set curriculum as that was done by the state and district where they worked.
If you’ve got a problem with the outcomes then start working to improve it.
Some jobs are likely easy enough to understand and do that such people almost anywhere can do them with a level of perfection. Teaching isn’t such a job in that what to do and how to do it varies from one teacher’s perspective compared to another’s. Some want to follow path A while others doing the same sort of job insist on taking their own individually different paths with the same general destinations in mind. One teacher’s ideas for his/her daily duty performance will seldom match those of others with the same job title. Part of the reason for that… Read more »
Wait, didn’t PPF just say that teachers were handed a curriculum, and they just followed it?
Now you are saying there’s no script, which I believe is true. It’s sad that more teachers didn’t take the individual path you describe, the one that would lead to more kids learning.
A curriculum is not intended as a daily”script” as to the daily and minute-by-minute instructional actions of teachers. Generally speaking, it’s only a set of guideposts as to goal expectations. How the teacher accomplishes that are the teacher’s decisions. He/she can do marvelously well in some aspects and very poorly in others. Seldom is it the case that a teacher is excellent at achieving excellence in every aspect of the job and in meeting every expectation of the overall curriculum as well. The Bell Curve describes such things for teacher performance just as it does for other occupations and pursuits… Read more »
Pritzker, Welch, and Harmon effectively ‘spiking the ball’ on killing off the meager Invest in Kids Act (IKA) to appease the teachers union is about as obscene cowardice as it gets for ‘leaders’. The teachers unions foaming at the mouth animosity towards the IKA is extreme and shows a radical agenda out of step with nearly all of IL and America.
It’s laughable that they are claiming that Pritzker can implement “cost-containment measures”, when the appropriation is only half of the estimated cost.
Income-adjusted co-pays? That will make up the other half of the cost?
It should come as no surprise to any sentient citizen of Illinois, New York or California, the list goes on. The ‘out migration’ isn’t the disappearance of the underclass, the poor or the un-educated. One need only look at the exodus to the Prime cities of Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Colorado. These mobile citizens are not seeking affordable locales where they can retire on their pensions and SS benefits. Indeed, these folks are moving to markedly ‘more expensive’ neighborhood’s ! I’m not talking about Destin, Colorado Springs Little Rock ! Palm Beach and Wellington, Aspen and Sea Island Georgia, where… Read more »
Part of the ‘doom loop’ is that as time marches on and the downward spiral continues, the people left are the ones that don’t care and think there are plenty of magic beans.
I don’t care how badly the pensions are funded, because I’m looking forward to the day when those public employees stand at their mailboxes looking for their pension check and it doesn’t arrive. Then they can see how little the Democrats they’ve been voting for care about them.
Enjoy your wait. Pensioners will continue to enjoy their checks and 3% increase every January.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA….Pensions are a promise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A promise that not only can’t be kept but also they refuse to keep and listen to their own actuaries. Gotta love how they jag TRS…only 63% of the required actuarial payment made while the other four are 85, 84, 85 and 77%. It is pathetic that you and your ilk turn a blind eye towards the greater need for education funding (Not pensions for teachers) at the expense of your extorted “promise”
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…taxes are too high. Forget a promise but instead they are constitutionally protected contracts that can not be diminished or impaired. Even if the pension funds run out the state is still on the hook to pay. Also your idea that they “turned a blind eye” is a flat out lie. One that gets repeated here by the ignorant and uneducated. They sued to have pensions fully funded but the courts have told pensioners that they have no right to a set level of funding only that funds are available to pay pensioners. They didn’t turn a blind eye but… Read more »
I don’t think those days are anywhere near yet but they are coming. Illinois has considerable real estate that will be confiscated and liquidated to pay for those pensions. the end will come but probably not soon enough for anyone alive today to recognize.
Someday, if and when the political balance changes on the Illinois Supreme Court, that court will correct the erroneous interpretations made by prior justices of the Constitution’s pension clause. Not possible, you say? Who thought Roe v. Wade would be overturned? Granted, one is a constitutional right, one a legislated right. But the political will succeeded, and that’s needed in Illinois. Alternatively, a constitutional amendment is necessary. In today’s political cesspool called Illinois, that, too, seems highly improbable. But some day, some day, while Illinois’ pensioners are gleefully sipping champagne along the railing of Illinois’ version of the Titanic, the… Read more »
Medicaid benefits for illegal immigrants but my LEGAL child is SOL at 26!
Dave, tell that boy of yours to go to Mexico and then swim across the Rio Grande on the way back. When’s hes back in Texas have him self identify as a Venezuelean amnesty seeker to the nearest CBP officer.
Myorkas will put him up in a hotel and at long last he’ll be out of your basement!