Keeping up with the Borrowing Fad

by Ashley Muchow Eastern Illinois University will borrow up to $7 million to cover university expenses up to August as it eagerly anticipates $19 million in overdue state appropriations.  Early this month Governor Quinn signed into law an amendment to Senate Bill 0642 allowing Illinois’s nine public universities to take out loans to cover three quarters of what the...

by Ashley Muchow

Eastern Illinois University will borrow up to $7 million to cover university expenses up to August as it eagerly anticipates $19 million in overdue state appropriations.  Early this month Governor Quinn signed into law an amendment to Senate Bill 0642 allowing Illinois’s nine public universities to take out loans to cover three quarters of what the state owes.

Yes, another piece of state legislation is instigating evasion of solving Illinois’s pivotal problem: deficit borrowing and spending.  Not only have our legislators resisted feasible measures, as proposed in ourBudget Solutions 2011, to cut spending and still toy with Quinn’s proposal of borrowing to cover the $4 million due to the state’s pension funds, we now see the flood gates opening further as an “important fiscal tool” aggravates the familiar problem of borrowing and spending.  With such fiscal tools at their disposal, it’s no wonder Illinois’s universities are choosing to ignore the problem rather than attacking head on the cuts and adjustments needed to balance their budgets.  Their state government is no role model.