Failed $2.2 billion temporary budget was unbalanced, more of the same for Illinois, according to GOMB

A last-ditch attempt at a temporary budget represented the same untenable spending pattern that taxpayers cannot afford.

Two days into the fiscal year, the state is still operating without a budget. On July 1, the Illinois House voted down a proposed amendment that would have provided a one-month operating budget of $2.2 billion that would have done nothing to fix Illinois’ spending problem.

The Director of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, or GOMB, Tim Nuding, penned a letter to Gov. Bruce Rauner that the one-month budget proposal was on track to make for an unbalanced budget. He concluded: “This proposal … is little, if any, improvement over the out of balance unconstitutional budget the legislature passed just a few weeks ago.”

The GOMB analysis concludes that this monthly spending, when annualized and in addition to other statutory spending, would total more than $36 billion from the General Revenue Fund for fiscal year 2016. That’s an amount reaching Quinn-era levels. Meanwhile, GOMB projects only $32 billion in revenue, which means this one-month proposal, on an annualized basis, would be $4 billion dollars short, just like the last budget proposal Democrats passed.

What’s more, the $2.2 billion, one-month plan would only have funded 13 agencies out of 88.

The Illinois Constitution requires a balanced budget, and this failed temporary proposal represented the same untenable spending pattern that taxpayers cannot afford.