Illinois Valley Times

At a recent press conference in Peoria with Sen. Win Stoller (R-Peoria), Sen. Sue Rezin (R-Morris) spoke about the Democrats' plan to partially repay the state's nearly $5 billion unemployment insurance trust fund debt.

"Earlier today I joined Sen. Win Stoller in Peoria for a press conference about the majority party's failure to fully fund our state's unemployment insurance trust fund," Rezin posted. "This decision could lead to one of the largest tax increases on businesses in Illinois history as well as worker benefit reductions." 

During the press conference, Rezin said the Democratic lawmakers weren't being fiscally responsible.

"I felt, like Sen. Stoller said, this was avoidable. The governor and his Democrat allies in the General Assembly had nearly a year to allocate federal ARPA dollars to fix the growing issue in the unemployment trust fund. Instead of being fiscally responsible and prioritizing (the unemployment trust fund) they waited and decided to appropriate our one-time federal dollars on other programs and proposals, including $1 billion in personal projects in their districts," Rezin said. "Now after only paying off 60% of the trust fund debt, they are patting themselves on the back and calling themselves financially responsible while our state employees and employers are preparing to bear the burden for their failure to truly fix this problem."

Rezin said the government funding should have been put toward the trust fund last year.

"We begged the governor and the Democratic lawmakers to use ARPA funds to fix the UI trust fund as soon as the feds announced that Illinois would be receiving over $8 billion. Instead of doing the responsible thing last year, they chose to wait, and while they waited, they couldn't help themselves and they spent the money," Rezin said. "ARPA wasn't intended for bigger government or pork projects. The federal government designed our budget to be used for COVID-19 relief, and to help with the economic recovery. They approved these funds to be used on items like the UI trust fund. This prompted 31 states to use their ARPA dollars to fully fund their own states and to replenish and get their deficits to zero. Meanwhile, here in Illinois we waited till the last minute to allocate our funds to the UI trust fund. The whole time, the deficit grew larger and larger and now we finally decided to use our funds for the trust fund. We still are left with a $1.8 billion interest rate on bonds. If we would have chosen one year ago to borrow money to help solve this problem. the interest rates were at 1.5%, but because the governor's administration and the Democrats chose to wait until last week to solve this problem, if we choose to borrow to solve this problem interest rates now are at almost 4% and will go higher."

Last July, as the unemployment trust fund deficit was nearing $5 billion, Rob Karr, chief executive officer of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, told NewsChannel 20 that the deficit was "Historic. We've never seen this swing or been so deep in the hole."