From the Joliet Herald News
July 17, 2009
State budget lacking details?
By CINDY WOJDYLA CAIN ccain@scn1.com
House Minority Leader Tom Cross said he thinks his fellow legislators are "slowly, slowly" coming around to the fact that state government needs to be streamlined.
"We have to change the way we do things," said Cross, R-Oswego. "... You can't just each year spend more money than you have. It gets you in trouble."
Cross' comments come on the heels of the Legislature's approval of a $26 billion budget, which was signed by Gov. Pat Quinn.
Quinn had asked for $28 billion, Cross said, but the money just wasn't there. Quinn now has said he plans to come back to revisit the budget in six or seven months.
Quinn would like to see legislators themselves discuss revamping Medicaid and lawmaker pensions and consolidate redundant state services.
"None of that stuff took place," Cross said of the protracted budget negotiations. "... Everyone else is tightening their belts, we need to do it soon."
Cross said legislators are going to take 12 unpaid furlough days. They're also giving up cost-of-living raises. Quinn will be asking the state's union employees to agree to similar measures, Cross said. Streamlining and consolidating state government is going to be a tough challenge, though, Cross admitted.
"It's not easy to change a pattern that's been developed over 50 or 75 years," he said.
The state's residents and businesses are all cutting back because of the economy; it's time Illinois did so, too, he said.
"There's nothing good about a bad economy," he explained. "But what it does do is force you to take a look at what you're doing and say, 'Something's not right.'"
Assistant Republican Leader Renee Kosel, R-New Lenox, said Illinois has to get "leaner and meaner."
The budget has "structural holes" because it includes billions in federal stimulus money and $3.5 billion in borrowed money -- money that won't be there next year, she said. Also, the state's population has dropped about 750,000 in nine years, Kosel said.
"To think government can continue to grow with our population numbers shrinking isn't realistic."
Raising income taxes will only further weaken the business climate here, she added.
"We need to attract more business by building the economy, not hurting it."