State Rep. Tom Demmer (R-Dixon) alleges the governor failed to correct what the Republicans call a flawed budget bill.
He listed the contended flaws in the FY22 state budget enacted by the Democrats on a party-line vote.
“We were able to identify several things that were wrong with this year's budget, including legislative pay raises, including a billion dollars in pork projects for Democrat-only districts, including $650 million in tax increases on Illinois businesses, including $0 to pay down a $5 billion debt on our unemployment insurance trust fund and now including a list of articles in that bill that did not have an effective date,” Demmer said. “Now we have to come back and clean all that up. So, when the bill landed on Gov. Pritzker’s desk, he had the opportunity through his amendatory veto to correct those problems.”
Yet the governor ignored all but one, Demmer said.
“He could have taken out legislative pay raises,” he said. “He could have taken out a billion dollars in pork spending. He could have taken out $650 million in tax increases. He could have dedicated money to pay down our $5 billion debt in the unemployment insurance trust fund. Instead, he did nothing. He left the budget untouched, flaws and all except for changing a few dates in a technical section of the bill. The governor had no reason not to fix the other problems in this budget but he chose not to. He chose to ignore those problems, he chose not to pick a fight with his own party who passed a flawed budget through a flawed process at the eleventh hour."
The bill, filed a few minutes before midnight, is 3,088 pages long.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Demmer said at a news conference. “We all know that's not the way that budgeting is supposed to work — it’s not the way the democracy is supposed to work. The governor abdicated his responsibilities and facilitated government working like that by simply correcting a technical error and leaving the larger problems untouched. It is inappropriate and we can't continue to operate like that, and that's why we're coming forward to call for increased transparency and increased public participation in a legitimate budget-making process that does not include these substantive errors year after year after year.”
The governor recommended replacing the effective date provisions of Senate Bill 2800, “which did not specify effective dates for certain appropriations, with provisions giving supplemental appropriations an immediate effective date and FY22 appropriations a July 1, 2021 effective date.”
The 3088-page bill was enacted on June 17.
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