With no real understanding what’s in it, so far not having seen even a draft, Illinois lawmakers will soon vote on a budget spending about $50 billion of your money.
This portion of Hanna Meisel’s Friday column from Capitol News Illinois is a must-read:
During House floor debate, Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, renewed his request for an estimate as to when a draft copy of the budget might drop – or at least a revenue estimate for the state’s fiscal year that begins July 1.
“You’re asking me?” replied Rep. Jay Hoffman, a Democrat from Swansea who was presiding over the House chamber at the time. Hoffman’s quip elicited laughs from members, and Keicher broke into a smile.
“Funny story,” Keicher responded. “After I made my inquiry last night, I had eight members of the other side of the aisle suggest to me that they hadn’t seen one either.”
The Republican superminority is routinely cut out from budget formation, but that’s a Democrat acknowledging that most of his party, too, is shut out.
And they laughed about it.
Only a few top leaders in the Democratic supermajority in the General Assembly will have much of an understanding of the budget when over a thousand pages of budget bills get shoved to members for a vote, probably this week. The rest of us will get a full story only in coming months, if ever.
Friday had been long been the scheduled end of the session, but it has been extended mainly because of remaining budget issues.
A big part of the problem with the budget is that lawmakers earlier voted to extend Medicaid coverage to undocumented immigrants with no understanding what that would cost. They currently anticipate it will cost $1.1 billion, but the governor’s office had budgeted just $220 million for that program, creating an $880 million budget hole. Of course, nobody really knows what it will cost because nobody knows how many hundreds of thousands are streaming into America, with many likely to end up in sanctuaries like Illinois.
That won’t stop Gov. JB Pritzker and many lawmakers from their annual routine. After the budget vote, they’ll once again brag about a “balanced budget” and all they’ve achieved.
-Mark Glennon
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Ted joined Dan and Amy to talk about the free speech controversy brewing in Wilmette due to the city’s refusal to fly a religious freedom flag, the city’s left-wing excesses and the growing culture war, the latest money spent on the illegal immigrant crisis, and more.
Weekly crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department: Report through 4/14/2024.
A legislature that hides their budget and intents should not be trusted. Complete transparency will be the ONLY way this state will ever get out of the budgetary disaster it has created.
All they’ve achieved is to buy more illegal voters for the democratic party and try try to keep everyone in the dark about what’s in the bill. Instead of requesting Information demand it!
Welch/Harmon – “Just pass the bill, we’ll fill in the details later…”
Yep, laugh it up taxpayer gobbling elected officials. It’s all one big party in Springrad, isn’t it? “ You have to vote for it to see what’s in it “ dear old Nancy Pelosi advised everyone.
Democrats budget priority one?
Sex changes and abortions for illegals
Reparations for pre-1865 slavery
More hard core porn and grooming for school kids
Erasing God, religion and patriotism
And Medicaid for all, unless of course you work for a living.
Yeah, we should have another “balanced” budget debate where funds borrowed are no different than revenues according to Illinois. Just counting down the number of credit cards Illinois melts before taxes are raised on retirees, services and anything else that moves. Too bad, pensioners. Move to the back of the bus. A new, exciting social program has taken your front seat: illegal immigrant welfare! How much? Who knows! Who cares!
How about not giving Medicaid coverage to illegal immigrants?
How about eliminating sanctuary status?
Illinois state budget = Fun with Numbers!!
Just sign a blank bill and they will fill in the programs and numbers afterwards.
How much of this is reminiscent of Madigan’s last minute changes. Three or four hours before voting a different 1,000 page budget is introduced then everyone scrambles to try to read the details. Just like Pelosi-Pass it and then read it.
Yes, they sure will. I wonder what the reaction will be this time? I mean, given how the Illinois taxpayer funded health-care-for-illigal-aliens budget kerfuffle is occurring at the same time that the Fed’s are getting ready to default on the national debt (after having spent 3 years giving boatloads of money to everyone), while Brandon up in Chicago’s trying to figure out what he’s going to say about how he’s paying for everything he’s promised. It’s as if everywhere you turn there’s some level of guvmn’t hard at work being murky and obfuscating about having pledged to spend far more… Read more »
Johnson an odds on favorite to cry “ racism “ when things don’t go his way.
The real problem is that the sheep in both houses in both parties won’t stand up to leadership and demand to see the budget in advance. They make a mockery of the “three readings” requirement, germaneness and single subject rules.
And leadership plays them easily like a bunch of toadies. The schedule always runs into the long Memorial Day holiday, so legislators fold easily and don’t demand to see what they are voting on because they have to get home to their picnics, parades and golf games.
Democrat legislators exist for one purpose and one purpose alone: Vote Party Line on every bill that comes to the floor. They operate like the Chinese Communist Party. Any D legislator who starts asking questions, or get a little too full of their constitutional power, is quickly primaried by someone even more crazy. The Ordained Rabbi who voted ‘present’ instead of ‘yea’ on the moloch worshiping abortion bill a few years ago was unceremoniously tossed out of the legislature as his insane crazy leftist primary opponent trounced him with all the money and support of every other political organization. That… Read more »
What a crock… every. year.
Just utterly disgraceful.