 Illinois Treasurer Dan Rutherford, Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar
Topinka, House Minority Leader Tom Cross and Senate Minority Leader
Christine Radogno held a joint news conference to address comments
Quinn made late last week.
"The very thought that anyone would consider borrowing as a solution
to our problem is breathtaking. We cannot use borrowing as a crutch
for a tax system and budgetary system that is just broken," said
Topinka, who is in charge of the state's checkbook.
Quinn told a gaggle of reporters Aug. 11 that he would continue to
push his plan for borrowing in the upcoming veto session in October,
despite the Legislature refusing to support his original idea this
spring to borrow $8.75 billion.
"The notion that you put your head in the sand and pretend these
burdens don't exist isn't a good way to go," Quinn said.
Quinn insists that the borrowing, which would be done by selling
bonds, actually would be a "restructuring" of current debt by
shifting the weight of Illinois' obligations from school districts,
medical vendors, local governments and businesses to the state.
"I'd rather have the state bear that waiting," Quinn said.
The state has about 190,000 past-due bills dating back to April that
tally up to about $4 billion. In addition, the state owes corporate
tax refunds, bringing the total due to about $8 billion.
Overdue bills continue to pile up despite an income tax increase
passed in January that is asking individuals to pay about 66 percent
more in taxes and businesses to pay 47 percent more in taxes. The
new tax is estimated to bring in about $6 billion annually.
Republican leaders said Thursday they advocate more cuts to the
state budget on top of a General Assembly-approved budget that
trimmed about $2 billion from Quinn's introduced budget of $35.4
billion.
"We don't believe, we don't support any further debt in the state of
Illinois," Rutherford said.
Any borrowing requires a three-fifths majority vote, and therefore
Republican support would be required in the Illinois House and
Senate. A scaled-back version of Quinn's plan failed in the state
Senate this spring, managing to gain only 19 votes in the 59-member
chamber.
Cross, R-Oswego and Radogno, R-Lemont, said the state also needs to
enact serious reforms to its pension and Medicaid systems.
"If we're going to climb out of this hole in the next few years,
borrowing is not the way to come out of it," Cross said.
It will take "Medicaid and pension (reforms) and holding the line on
spending," he said. "I happen to think this year's budget, while we
would have liked even more cuts, started that process."
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Cross and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, worked
together on legislation that would work to change the state's
pension system, which has an unfunded liability -- how much the
state owes when compared with how much it has on hand to pay current
and future pensions -- of $80 billion.
Several organizations, however, peg the unfunded liability for the
state's five pension systems much higher than $80 billion. The
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a
Washington, D.C.-based free market think tank, put the number at
$190 billion.
Cross and Madigan's plan would swap the burden of making up the
growing costs of Illinois' pensions from state taxpayers to state
employees.
The measure creates a menu of three options:
-
Employees hired
before Jan. 1 could keep their current benefits but would be asked
to contribute more to them annually.
-
All employees could move to the benefits package created for people
hired after Jan. 2, which means working longer to get a pension, the
second-most expensive option.
-
Any employee could move to a 401(k)-style defined contribution
package, the cheapest option.
The tiered system would go into effect beginning July 1 for most
employees.
Cross and Madigan's plan failed to come up for a vote in the
Legislature's spring session, though negotiations among Republicans,
Democrats and state worker labor unions have continued through the
summer, and the topic is expected to emerge in the fall veto
session.
[Illinois
Statehouse News; By ANDREW THOMASON]
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