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Good Afternoon.
President Cullerton
Speaker Madigan
Leader Radogno
Leader Durkin
Lieutenant Governor Sanguinetti
Attorney General Madigan
Secretary White
Comptroller Munger
Treasurer Frerichs
Members of the General Assembly, Thank you for attending today.
Thank you for your service to the people of Illinois. Over the
past week, we’ve commemorated the life of Illinois’ greatest leader,
Abraham Lincoln.
In the lead up to his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation,
President Lincoln delivered a letter to Congress, writing in part:
“The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with
the occasion… We must think anew and act anew.” While the
challenges before us are very different than those that faced our
16th President, here, in the Land of Lincoln, we recognize that the
road ahead – our road to a more prosperous future – is a difficult
one. And like President Lincoln’s call to Congress, we too must
“think anew and act anew.” We must be willing to take actions we’d
rather avoid, and make decisions that may seem unpopular in the
short run. The budget outlined today is the budget Illinois can
afford, and that in itself is an example of “thinking anew.”
Because for far too long we have been living beyond our
means—spending money that Illinois taxpayers could not afford.
This budget is honest with the people of Illinois, and it presents
an honest path forward. Like a family, we must come together to
address the reality we face. Families know that every member can’t
get everything they want. But we can pay for what we need most.
And we can reform our system so we are able to invest more in the
future. Because the task before us is so large, all our challenges
cannot be solved by a single budget. It will take time to restore
Illinois to fiscal health.
Now is the time to start on a responsible path after years of
financial recklessness. Instilling discipline is not easy, saying
“no” is not popular - but it is now or never for Illinois.
It is make or break time. Before we can address next year’s
budget, we must first solve the current year’s crisis.
As you know, the current budget was $1.6 billion in the hole when it
was signed last year.
And the prior administration directed state agencies NOT to control
their costs.
As a result, we are in the middle of a crisis that gets worse every
day.
The Child Care Assistance Program is out of money and families are
worried about how to care for their children.
Court reporters will start missing payroll next month, threatening
to grind our justice system to a halt.
And our state prisons will start missing payroll in early April,
making them unable to fulfill their most basic operations.
Everyone in this chamber understands the severity of what is
immediately in front of us.
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Leader Radogno and Leader Durkin – thank
you for allowing your staffs to meet with our administration these
past few weeks to find a responsible solution to our immediate
budget crisis.
It appears that we are very close, literally days away, from a
resolution. And every day counts.
Members of the General Assembly – now is the time for action.
It is time to solve this crisis.
Let’s continue the Child Care Assistance Program.
Let’s keep our court rooms open.
Let’s keep our corrections officers on duty.
Let’s put the people of Illinois over partisan politics.
Solving this year’s crisis will eliminate $1.6 billion from next
year’s deficit.
Let’s get it done.
Even after we solve this fiscal year’s crisis, we will still be left
with a budget hole of $6.2 billion for the coming fiscal year.
This huge deficit is the result of years of bad decisions,
sleight-of-hand budgeting and giveaways we couldn’t afford.
It is NOT the result of decreasing tax rates.
Some in the General Assembly are eager to discuss new revenue.
But before revenue can be discussed, reform is essential.
Before we ask the people of Illinois to pay more to fund state
government, we must ensure taxpayers are getting value for their
money.
Asking for more of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money without
fundamentally reforming the structure of state government would
further erode public confidence and accelerate our decline.
Waste and inefficiency are rampant in the system. Illinois
government is currently designed to benefit those inside the system
rather than the working families of our state.
We must institute major reforms, or whatever balanced budget we
craft this year will be undone in the years ahead by the special
interests that make their money from the government and pay
politicians to spend more. We must eliminate conflicts of interest
in state government and end our broken system.
These reforms won’t be easy. Decades of special interest laws will
be difficult to undo. But to be compassionate, we must be
competitive. And that means having the political courage to put the
people’s interests first and the special interests last.
Our top priority for financial reform must be our pension system.
That is true regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision on SB 1.
Even if our pension systems were fully funded, taxpayers would still
be on the hook for $2 billion.
But our pension systems are not fully funded. They are $111 billion
in the hole—the worst pension crisis in America.
As it stands right now, one out of every four dollars taken from
taxpayers by the state goes into a system that is giving more than
ELEVEN THOUSAND government retirees tax-free, six-figure pensions
worth as much as, in one case, $450,000 per year!
Without the reforms proposed in this budget, nearly 25 cents of
every tax dollar will continue going into a broken pension system
instead of into our social services safety net, our schools, or back
into the pockets of taxpayers and small businesses!
That is unfair and unsustainable – and it changes with this budget.
Government employees deserve fair and competitive benefits, but we
cannot continue to raise taxes on all Illinoisans in order to fund
the retirement benefits of a small fraction of our residents.
The pension reform plan in this budget will protect every dollar of
benefits earned to date.
Let me repeat that: the pension reform plan protects every dollar of
benefits earned.
What you’ve earned, you’re going to get.
And if you are retired, you get everything you were promised. That’s
fair and it’s right.
But moving forward, all future work will be under the Tier 2 pension
plan, except for our police and firefighters.
Those who put their lives on the line in service to our state
deserve to be treated differently, and I believe the public will
stand with me in this single case of special treatment.
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This budget also gives employees hired before 2011 a choice to take
a buyout option – a lump sum payment and a defined contribution plan
in return for a voluntary reduction in cost-of-living adjustments.
It’s time to empower our workforce and address one of the biggest
fiscal challenges we face.
These reforms will yield more than $2 billion in savings in the
first year alone.
And by bringing health care benefits more in line with those
received by the taxpayers who pay for them, we save an additional
$700 million.
We recognize that some of these reforms cannot be achieved through
legislation alone.
Some must be achieved through good faith bargaining, and I hope that
those on the other side of the table are as committed as I am to
achieving the types of meaningful reform that are necessary for
Illinois’ future.
While the state tightens its belt, so too must local governments and
transportation agencies. The amount of money transferred to local
governments has grown 42 percent over the past decade. The state
currently transfers $6 billion every year to local governments.
Those governments are currently sitting on more than $15 billion in
cash reserves.
The reduction in local government sharing in this budget is equal to
just 3 percent of their total revenue.
Along with this modest cutback, our turnaround reforms will reduce
unfunded mandates, and give local governments and voters the tools
to save hundreds of millions of dollars through consolidation,
employment flexibility and compensation restructuring.
Similarly, waste and inefficiency can be cut from the complex web
that comprises our public transportation structure.
Statewide, our public transportation agencies spend billions of
taxpayer dollars.
Our budget reductions for the state’s largest transit agency amount
to less than 5 percent of its overall budget, and here, too, the
proposals in our turnaround agenda give our transportation entities
the tools to save hundreds of millions of dollars.
Reining in these costs allows us to minimize reductions in other
areas of the budget.
For Medicaid, our budget reduces costs significantly while
maintaining eligibility levels for most lower-income Illinoisans.
We plan to re-implement many of the Medicaid reform measures that
were enacted just a few years ago but have already been undone.
By re-instituting the SMART Act and prioritizing our
re-determination efforts, we will save hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Our budget will also reduce costs by fixing our broken criminal
justice system.
Far too many offenders return to prison within three years of
leaving – a vicious and costly cycle.
Our prisons are overcrowded.
Our corrections officers are overworked.
By reforming our criminal justice system we can make our prisons
safer, rehabilitate ex-offenders so they become productive members
of society, and save many tens of millions of dollars.
Taken together, our turnaround reforms, along with the difficult but
necessary choices in this budget, will enable us to invest in our
future.
Making these tough choices is a small price to pay for the promise
of a better tomorrow for our children and grandchildren.
In the gallery today, we are joined by students from Lincoln
Community High School in Lincoln, and Lanphier High School and
Lincoln Magnate School in Springfield.
This budget allows us to invest in them.
For years, state support for education has been cut, even when it
didn’t have to be.
It’s time to make education our top priority again – and that’s what
this budget does.
We start by increasing high-quality early childhood education
options for our most vulnerable children.
Every dollar invested today in early childhood education saves us
more than $7 in the future.
Increasing funding for our youngest is the smart AND the
compassionate thing to do.
This budget also increases K-12 education funding by $300 million,
helping school districts in our state that most need our support.
We have much more work to do to make our schools among the best in
the nation, but we’re proud of the commitment we are making in this
budget.
What we proposed today is a turnaround budget.
It improves public safety, provides care for our most vulnerable,
boosts funding for education, and restructures the core costs of
state government that are holding us back.
However, while this budget begins to fix our financial problems, the
only real answer to our challenges is to become pro-growth again.
We need a booming economy – more small businesses and entrepreneurs
starting here, and more people and businesses moving here.
If we don’t take action now to expand the economic pie, the people
of Illinois will forever be left to fight over smaller and smaller
slices.
Our citizens deserve a path to economic growth and empowerment – and
that means putting people first and special interests last.
To grow our economy, we must enact meaningful workers compensation
reform, unemployment insurance reform, lawsuit reform, pension
reform and tax reform.
We’ve got to freeze property taxes, cut the red tape inside state
and local government, and let people control their own economic
destinies.
We need to end the corrupt bargains and the conflicts of interest.
And we need to finally let the people have their say on a “Term
Limits Amendment” to the state constitution.
If we make these reforms, we will be laying a solid foundation for
economic growth and prosperity.
With reform, we will be able to:
Invest more in education and give our kids world class schools;
Invest more in our social safety net to help our most vulnerable
residents; And invest more in our infrastructure.
This turnaround plan reflects President Lincoln’s call to “think
anew and act anew.”
In it, we end the irresponsible and reckless practices of the
past, and make sure they will never happen again. We make
difficult choices that no one wants to make. It is what this
occasion requires. And it’s what we were elected to do - make
choices based on what’s best for the next generation, not the next
election. This is our last, best chance to get our house in order.
Let’s get it done. Thank you. And God bless you. |
