As
the state legislative overtime session drags along and Statehouse types begin
half-joking about October as a possible adjournment date and pass on rumors
that the governor is prepared to continue doing one-month budgets until January
if necessary, it may be important to take a step back from the brink and take a
look at where we are.
This
fight between House Speaker Michael Madigan on one side and Senate President
Emil Jones and Governor Rod Blagojevich on the other has often been described
as a contest to show which man has the biggest... um... "appendage."
But a buddy of mine thinks it's much worse than that. "It's not whose is
bigger," he said, "It's a fight over who has one." Obviously,
this type of thinking needs to stop.
The
governor's demand for "more, more, more" from a new budget just isn't
matching up with reality and is perhaps the most frustrating thing about this
overtime session. Because we're in overtime, it takes three-fifths of all
members to pass a budget. The Republicans are at the table now, and they're
definitely not on board for the governor's tax hikes and grandiose budget
schemes.
Senate
President Emil Jones may have 37 Democratic votes on paper, one more than the
minimum three-fifths required to pass anything now. But at the very utmost on
the best possible day Jones has 35 votes for a budget plan that spends more
money than the allegedly insufficient House-passed proposal. Two Senators are
way on the outs with Jones - Sens. Tony Munoz (D-Chicago) and Lou Viverito
(D-Burbank) - and it's highly unlikely that either can ever be brought back
into the fold.
Maybe
presidential wannabe Barack Obama could call his old buddy and TV ad pitchman
Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale) and get him to switch sides to help out his
"mentor" Emil Jones. Dillard recently cut a television ad which is
currently airing in Iowa that praises his former state legislative colleague.
But for now, the Senate Republicans seem to be siding with Democratic House
Speaker Michael Madigan's concept of a slow to no-growth budget.
Frankly,
the House Democrats ought to just call this gigantic bluff by Jones and
Blagojevich. The two men have tried to blame the continuing overtime session on
Madigan, but they won't concede that they simply don't have the votes to
accomplish their goals. Madigan should just tell Blagojevich and Jones to pass
a new budget, and then he and his Democrats will come back into session and
approve it. They won't be able to find enough votes for that, of course, so
perhaps their rhetoric will cease and desist.
House
Democratic members, meanwhile, need to grow some stones. They let Speaker
Madigan talk them into voting for a budget in May that they all knew was a
fantasy. Downstaters and suburbanites voted for it knowing that their regions
got little while Cook County's Stroger Hospital was given a whopping $100
million.
Yet
now some are complaining that the governor is ginning up opposition to their
budget vote back in their districts. Yes, the governor isn't making things any
easier by singling out legislators for abuse, but they voted for the darned
thing.
After
a handful of House Democrats signed a letter that called on Madigan to move on
with negotiations and abandon the very budget plan that they had voted for,
several meekly retreated after receiving a phone call from Madigan asking that
they remove their names from the letter. Say what you will about the Senate
Democrats, but the rank and file in that chamber has managed to rein in Emil
Jones on more than one occasion and regularly challenges his decisions. The
House Democratic caucus, on the other hand, just sits there and eats whatever
the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz feeds it.
And
then there are the Republicans, who regularly say what they don't want but
rarely say what they could accept. They're at the bargaining table now, and
even though the governor hasn't actually yet encouraged any vigorous debate
during the budget negotiations, they need to eventually help find some common
ground with the Democrats as a whole or we'll be stuck in this overtime
forever.
OK,
I feel better now.
-30-
Rich
Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and
thecapitolfaxblog.com.