It's been clear from the beginning that Gov. Pat
Quinn muffed his budget rollout.
Instead of stressing the billion dollars or so in
cuts he made and the additional cuts he might be open to, Quinn has repeatedly
stressed the need for a 50 percent increase in the income tax rate and has
flatly rejected additional budget reductions.
Polling conducted for the Senate Democrats
reportedly shows voters want the exact opposite approach. First, make the cuts,
then increase taxes if and only if they are absolutely necessary.
So, Quinn hasn't made it any easier to wrap up the
General Assembly's business by May 31st and balance a budget that has a hole
somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 billion.
Senate President John Cullerton said last week he
believed two of the three major issues facing the General Assembly were going
quite well. You'd never know it by hanging out at the Statehouse, but he was
more upbeat than I've seen him in weeks.
An ethics reform bill is beginning to take shape as
Cullerton negotiates with the governor and the governor's reform
commission.
The public works "capital" bill is also
moving forward, Cullerton said. The leaders have agreed to a basic outline of
revenue sources, including increasing the sales tax on most alcohol; a sales
tax expansion to include candy, iced tea and beauty products; privatizing
Lottery management and allowing Internet Lottery ticket sales; raising various
vehicle registration and licensing fees; legalizing video poker and using Road
Fund money that is currently spent elsewhere.
The big problem, Cullerton said, is the budget. And
he's certainly right about that. I could tell you lots of stories, but I'll
just pass along one.
I spent some time last week with a liberal
African-American state Senator from Chicago who has historically fought
attempts to cut the budget, but has never been directly involved with the
budget-making process. The legislator, who is virtually assured of reelection,
stunned everyone in the room by announcing that the General Assembly ought to
just pass a budget and go home without a tax increase, no matter what the
deficit or damage might be. The legislator couldn't be convinced otherwise,
even by a highly respected Democratic budget expert who was also in the room.
When a liberal who represents a district chock full
of people who depend on state government services starts talking like that, you
wonder how they'll ever solve this budget crisis.
The mushrooms, as rank and file legislators are
often called, aren't restless. They're an apoplectic mess.
Legislators elect their leaders to protect them from
the harsh realities of political life. Leaders raise most of the money, they
run the campaigns, they help members write legislation to benefit their
districts or make them more popular with the folks back home. And they protect
members from tough votes.
Nobody has taken a truly tough vote in the General
Assembly since maybe 1983, when taxes were raised during a terrible recession.
They've been spoiled rotten, coddled and shielded at every turn by leaders who
have ignored the state's problems until everything finally exploded at once
with a fury unmatched since the state government went bankrupt in the 19th
Century. Nothing has prepared legislators as a group for the horrific votes
they face this month.
Cullerton says he sees the way forward. He believes
he can cut a deal with the reform commission that will keep the good government
types and the editorial boards off his members' backs through the 2010
election, and iron out the details of a massive public works program to create
jobs and mollify the unions. Easier said than done, I know, yet he thinks
that's all within reach right now.
But then, as Cullerton says, there's that budget
problem.
Quinn has made things even more difficult by caving
in too quickly to unions representing teachers and state employees. He had
demanded that the workers pay an extra two percent of their salary into their
pension funds. The unions pushed back hard, so Quinn announced he was dropping
the idea after being roundly booed and heckled during a raucous teachers union
rally.
An experienced negotiator would've made the teachers
and state workers sweat it out until the end of the legislative session, and
then handed them the concession. Now, they want more out of Quinn and he has
little to give.
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Rich Miller
also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and
thecapitolfaxblog.com.