 Work with him on what he considers reforms or pass a tax hike and wear the blame
for it.
Eight months into fiscal year 2016 without a state budget, the Republican from
Winnetka continued to put the onus for the budget impasse on Democrats in
general and House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago in particular.
After a speech to the Springfield and Illinois chambers of commerce Tuesday, the
governor told reporters, “I’ve said to the speaker, ‘I will work on tax reform
and new revenue, but we need to do reforms.’ So far, he’s refused.”
Asked if his position was so weak that he must simply wait for the speaker to
act, the governor said: “I can’t unilaterally raise taxes, and I won’t
unilaterally raise taxes. And I can’t pass a budget; only the Legislature can
pass a budget. ”
Rauner said Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both chambers of the General
Assembly, “know that only doing a tax hike isn’t either the right answer or
politically popular. They just want to try to force me to do that, and I’m not
going to that, so we’re going to stay the course.”
Democratic leaders, including Sen. President John Cullerton of Chicago, have
recently said Rauner’s wrong, that without some agreement with the GOP, the
votes simply aren’t there for a tax increase.
They’ve also rejected the core of the Rauner “Turnaround Agenda,” with a Madigan
spokesman recently calling it “neither structural nor reform” but “another whack
at middle class families so the 1 Percenters can get further ahead.”
Rauner has said while he’s never said one thing must or must not be included in
a grand bargain with Democrats, he wants:
Term limits for elected state officials, including legislators, and independent
legislative redistricting.
A property tax freeze coupled with local governments being given the option to
cut costs by removing some items from collective bargaining, the prevailing wage
and contracting rules.
Significant changes to the state’s civil lawsuit and workers compensation
systems.
Rauner on Tuesday argued that simply using his veto and other executive powers
to control out-of-whack spending or to fashion a one-year patch would not be
addressing Illinois’ fundamental flaws in its political and business
environments. Those flaws, he says, are costing the state population, jobs and
the ability to compete.
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 “Higher taxes or fewer services … I say that’s
not the choice,” the governor said Tuesday. “Let’s do faster
economic growth and less government waste and bureaucracy. We’ll
free up billions to put into our schools and human services. That
that needs to be the conversation.”
“If we were just an average-growing state — average-growing over the
last 15 to 17 years — we wouldn’t have a budget deficit, we wouldn’t
have unpaid bills, we wouldn’t have had the need for a tax in 2011
and we’d have money for our schools. We need to grow and we need to
shrink the cost of government.”
Not everyone agrees with the idea that Illinois can right itself
solely by downsizing government and promoting growth, especially in
the short term.
Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the
University of Illinois-Springfield, said that while both are
legitimate goals, even eliminating the state’s entire payroll
wouldn’t let Illinois balance its budget and pay its debt.
Democrats and Republicans alike, he said, are probably going to have
to accept some bitter pills — likely reduced spending on social
services for Democrats and some form of tax increase for Republicans
— if there is to be a budget agreement anytime soon.
Without an overall budget for fiscal 2016, the state is still making
payments on roughly 90 percent of the bills it covered in the
previous year by paying for costs mandated in continuing
appropriations, by court decrees, in the primary education budget
that did pass and for its debt service.
And that spending does not include funds for higher education or
most social services.
Illinois also is sitting on about $6.9 billion in unpaid bills, and
that amount will grow to $10 billion to $12 billion by June 30, the
end of fiscal year 2016 if action isn’t taken, according to state
Comptroller Leslie Munger, R-Lincolnshire. Additionally, Illinois
unfunded pension obligations are estimated at $111 billion to $113
billion.
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