In this issue:
- Voting No on tax increases and the state’s largest budget
- Physician-assisted suicide bill passes
- More Second Amendment restrictions
- Some issues did not get addressed
Voting No on tax increases and the state’s largest budget
Very late on Saturday night the House Democrats rammed through Governor Pritzker’s record-setting spending bill and his tax increases to pay for it.
I voted No.
Less than six hours before the adjournment deadline, the final draft of the budget was finally made public – over three thousand pages! The first draft came out the day before, but it was amended on Saturday night just before passage.
The budget, which spends $55.2 billion, is the largest spending bill ever passed in Illinois history. It was put together by Democrats behind closed doors, with absolutely no transparency. All during the final night of session, Democrats shut down debate, dodged questions and waived the House Rules in order to keep their spending train moving faster and faster.
Even though revenue is tighter this year, Governor Pritzker still found a way to spend even more money, including millions of dollars in pork projects in Democrat-held districts, and yet another pay raise for politicians.
To pay for all this spending, Democrats raised taxes on everything from sports betting to vaping products. They skipped a payment to the state’s emergency fund (commonly known as the “Rainy Day Fund”) and delayed a shift of motor fuel sales tax revenue into the Road Fund. These kinds of gimmicks are only making Illinois’ fiscal condition worse.
The budget package also gave the Governor unprecedented power to make spending decisions, even after seeing the way he abused his executive authority during the pandemic.
In the last few days, the General Assembly has put more regulations on you, raised your taxes, and made it harder to raise a family in this state due to government overreach.
It was a sad ending to the spring session.
Physician-assisted suicide bill passes
A bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide in Illinois passed the House last Thursday.
The bill creates a system that is ripe for abuse, and which tells the most vulnerable among us that their lives are worth less. Illinois doctors voted overwhelmingly to oppose the bill, which many of them feel violates their fundamental oath to “first do no harm.” I voted No, along with a bipartisan group, but the bill passed anyway.
It was passed with the kind of deceptiveness that we have unfortunately gotten used to seeing in Springfield late in session. Senate Bill 1950 was originally a bill for “Sanitary Food Preparation” according to its title. But it was amended at the last minute to become the physician-assisted suicide bill. This is what is wrong with our work in the final week of spring session: trying to sneak bad legislation through in the 11th hour and trying to trick our constituents into believing otherwise.
Regardless of how you feel about this issue, this is not good government.
More Second Amendment restrictions
I voted No on proposals to add even more restrictions on the rights of law-abiding gun owners, but unfortunately these bills passed.
Senate Bill 8 creates new and excessive firearm storage requirements, and like many other recent gun control bills passed in Illinois, is of dubious Constitutionality.
It contains multiple conflicting and unclear provisions that raise questions about the workability of the law, create legal conflicts for hunters and trap shooters, and paints law-abiding gun owners with a broad brush to blame them for crimes committed by persons using stolen firearms.
House Bill 850 also passed in the closing days of session. This bill provides assistance to the Attorney General when facing lawsuits against Illinois’ unconstitutional FOID card regulation rules. It doubles down on Illinois’ Clear and Present Danger law, potentially making criminals of law-abiding gun owners, and it denies individuals their Constitutional rights.
If enacted, these new laws will guarantee more Constitutional litigation against the state and more costs to taxpayers.
Some issues did not get addressed
Some other major issues did not get addressed in the spring session.
We were able to raise enough objections to the proposed service tax increase to keep it from being brought up for a vote.
A wide-ranging energy omnibus bill appeared in the closing days, but it did not get brought up for a vote. There were multiple amendments filed as the sponsor and different stakeholders negotiated, but they were unable to come to a final agreement before time ran out.
Talks aimed at bailing out the Chicago-area mass transit system produced a bill which passed in the Senate, but did not get a vote in the House. I was very skeptical of the proposal that came over from the Senate, as it would have relied on increased taxes and fees on Illinoisans to clean up the financial mess in the mass transit system. That issue remains unresolved.
There was no action taken on funding or a property tax break for a new stadium for the Chicago Bears. The state should not be in the business of building stadiums for professional sports teams, so I cannot say I was sorry to see this proposal stall.
The Democrats also continued their frustrating inaction on ethics reform and estate tax reform.
Our current bill backlog
When a vendor provides the state with goods and services, they submit the bill to the Illinois Comptroller for payment. The Comptroller processes the paperwork and pays the bill when funds are available in the state’s checking account. Currently the total amount of unpaid bills is $1,515,548,822. This figure changes daily. Last year at this time the state had $1.1 billion in bills awaiting payment. This only includes bills submitted to the Comptroller for payment, not unfunded debts like the state’s pension liability, which is well over $100 billion.
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