Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s new budget “fix” indicates he’s living in a fiscal fairy tale. His spending adjustment recommendations do not come remotely close to balancing the budget, and he has failed to offer clean break from the state’s perpetual fiscal mismanagement.

• Governor Quinn claims to make $1.4 billion in spending reductions for fiscal year 2011 compared to fiscal year 2010. His department-by department allocations, however, only reduce last year’s spending levels by $509 million—a reduction of less than 2 percent. The remaining “savings”($891 million) come from fund shuffles and other indeterminate actions.
• Governor Quinn actually increases spending in some areas. For example, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services will see a $162 million increase over last year’s spending levels.
• Compared to the legislature-approved appropriations bill (House Bill 859) for fiscal year 2011, he’s reducing expenditures by just $155 million. That’s a reduction of less than one percent. The Department of Human Services spends five times that amount on labor costs and fringe benefits.
• On average, Governor Quinn is cutting the legislature-approved 2011 budget by $12 per Illinois citizen. In 2010, the state spent $2,040 per Illinoisan from general funds appropriations.
• The governor vetoed only one appropriation item from a 2,134-page appropriation bill. Twenty-six programs—out of hundreds—had their allocations reduced.
• Governor Quinn is relying heavily on vague, undefined “operational efficiencies” to reduce spending. One example: $41.9 million in savings from the Department of Corrections through overtime reduction and “other operational efficiencies.”
• Governor Quinn needed to find spending reductions of $4.672 billion from his original fiscal year 2011 proposal to balance the budget and make the pension payment. His new appropriation recommendations fall far short of that goal and total less than 4 percent of that amount.
• The governor’s plan does not account for how the state will make its $4 billion pension contribution this year. Wishing and waiting for additional borrowing is not a solution.

Governor Quinn passed up a golden opportunity to make the sensible reductions necessary to align spending with available revenues. By kicking the can down the road once again, Illinois’s fiscal condition will continue to deteriorate—to the detriment of Illinois families and businesses.

Despite what Springfield politicians like to claim, balancing the budget can be done. The Illinois Policy Institute’s line-by-line alternative budget, Budget Solutions 2011, provides a clear path for balancing the budget and making the state’s pension contribution—all without a jobs-killing tax hike.