SPRINGFIELD — Eight months into the current fiscal year without a budget and Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday will address the General Assembly about his plan for next year’s state budget.
The first-term Republican’s second budget address comes amid impending layoffs at public universities, disruption of social
(Credit: John Gregory/Illinois Radio Network)
services across Illinois and warnings that the state is digging itself billions of dollars deeper into debt due to declining revenue and court-mandated spending, there’s no sign of a resolution. But the state’s deficit under Rauner’s leadership will quickly surpass that left by his predecessor Pat Quinn.
Democrats say Rauner continues to insist on passing portions of his union-weakening “turnaround agenda” before he’ll agree to tax increases to balance the budget. The governor said that whereas he and fellow Republicans are seeking structural reforms that would increase revenue by growing the economy, Democrats offer only tax hikes and budget cuts.
One thing on which lawmakers from both parties can agree is that while state law requires the governor to present his budget plan for next year, Rauner’s speech needs to focus on resolving the current impasse as well.
In a report released Thursday, the Chicago-based Civic Federation, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, recommends raising personal and corporate income tax rates back to their pre-rollback levels of 5 percent and 7 percent, taxing non-Social Security retirement income, expanding the sales tax to services and temporarily removing the sales tax exemption for food and over-the-counter medicine, among other recommendations.
These increases should be coupled with spending cuts aimed at paying down the state’s unpaid bills and other changes to deal with ballooning pension costs, according to the report.
The Responsible Budget Coalition, a group of more than 250 social service agencies, labor unions and other organizations across the state, also is urging the state to “choose revenue.”
They say they want to hear the governor say his No. 1 priority is a budget that invests in families and communities and that he won’t use them as leverage for his non-budget agenda.