Issue Position: State Budget

Issue Position

The State of Illinois is in a fiscal crisis of enormous proportions. Our operating budget is estimated to be roughly $13 billion in the deficit. We simply cannot continue to operate with such mismanagement. It is time to stop our excessive spending and bring our expenditures in line with our revenues.

The General Assembly has one key and basic responsibility every year ... pass a balanced budget. Article VIII, Section 2 of our State constitution states that the "appropriations for a fiscal year shall not exceed funds estimated by the General Assembly to be available during that year."

For the past two years, the General Assembly has not passed anything close to something that resembles a balanced budget. The incumbents have refused to make the spending reductions necessary that would lower our spending to balance expenditures and revenues. Rather, the General Assembly has abrogated its basic responsibility and passed a bill that gives the Governor the authority to make whatever cuts he thinks are necessary to keep things running. And the Governor does not want to make cuts, rather he wants a tax increase.

It is time for these fiscal shenanigans to end. By any measureable standard of fiscal responsibility, Illinois is at or near the bottom among the 50 states. We share the dubious distinction with basket-case California of having the lowest bond rating of any state in the nation.

This is not an accomplishment to be proud of!

We deserve better from our government. It is time that the citizens of our district have a State Representative that will stand up and vote against the type of phony budgets and buck-passing that the General Assembly has engaged in.

There are hard decisions that have to be made on spending reductions, but it is critically important that the decisions be made. If we have any hope of turning our great State of Illinois around and putting it on a positive path for the future, we must get spending under control and balance our spending with our revenues. In other words, we must pass a budget that is reasonably in balance, not billions out of whack as has been done the past several years.

I promise to go to Springfield and fight for just that … a balanced budget. And I will not vote for one that does not balance expenditures with estimated revenues.

Again, the decisions will be hard ones on how to get us into balance, but the General Assembly must make those decisions and chart a positive fiscal course for our future … not one that is drowning in the red ink of budget deficits.

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