| General Assembly Passes Budget that Reflects Misplaced Priorities Late last week, the Illinois General Assembly passed the state’s budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, which represents the largest spending plan in Illinois history at $50.6 billion. The proposal now heads to the Governor to be signed. In the Senate, the plan received bipartisan opposition, in which Senate Republicans said the budget further reflects the Majority Party’s misplaced priorities and continues to expand the size of government with new programs at a time when revenues are slowing, and a recession is looming. Senator Plummer says this excessive spending is not sustainable and taxpayers will likely be on the hook down the road. While Senate Republicans were pleased to be at the budget negotiating table this year, as they sought to create a state budget that reflects the priorities of their constituents, the budget that passed missed the mark. Instead of providing better services to the developmentally disabled community, the FY24 budget prioritizes a program that provides free healthcare to undocumented immigrants, costing taxpayers hundreds of million of dollars. The spending plan also includes more than $300 million in Democrat-only projects and a $400 million slush fund for the Governor but fails to provide the necessary incentives to retain the state’s employers and bring new businesses and jobs to Illinois. “This was a budget process that made very clear the priorities of the two parties. We advocated for priorities that benefit all of Illinois, like funding services for our state’s most vulnerable citizens, protecting an important scholarship program for children in failing schools to get a better education, relief for families struggling to pay their electric bills, improvements to our business climate to help grow jobs, and help for our family farms,” said Plummer. “The majority party refused, and instead, they handed us a budget that did not fully fund our hospitals, but provides hundreds of millions of dollars for free gold-plated healthcare for people who aren’t even citizens, hundreds of millions more in pork projects just for Democratic districts, and a 400-million-dollar slush fund for the Governor to give to businesses that align with him politically. Worse yet, this budget isn’t even close to being balanced.” “The truth is that the people of Illinois don’t need a Democratic budget, they don’t need a Republican budget, they need a budget that works for everyone in Illinois. What they got instead is unacceptable, it’s embarrassing, and it’s shameful,” concluded Plummer. The FY24 budget, if signed into law, will take effect at the start of the new fiscal year beginning July 1, 2023. |
