Medicaid has ballooned to cover more than a quarter of Illinois’ population, with spending at $5.4 billion, up 141 percent 2015 compared with 2000. Now that a federal judge has ruled Illinois must speed up its Medicaid payments, the state’s Medicaid payment will increase $83 million each month, for a total monthly payment of $376 million.
The House will need 71 “yes” votes to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a permanent 32 percent income tax hike. The July 2 vote to pass the tax hike received 72 yeas.
More than a dozen Republicans joined House Democrats in passing a budget that includes a massive tax hike and no structural spending reforms. Gov. Bruce Rauner said he would veto the plan.
Much like other plans in the General Assembly before it, the House Democrats’ budget plan does nothing to structurally reform state government and bring down costs, but instead increases the burden on Illinois taxpayers.
Illinois’ fiscal collapse is the culmination of decades of budget gimmicks and taxes used to paper over the state’s structural spending problems and misplaced priorities that favor special interests over ordinary Illinoisans.
The Illinois Republicans’ budget proposal includes billions in tax hikes and has an ineffective spending “cap” that will likely result in deficit spending by 2020. The plan’s lack of reforms sets taxpayers up for a permanent tax hike in 2022.
Despite $30 billion in extra tax revenue, the politicians who passed Illinois’ 2011 income tax hike failed to solve Illinois’ pension crisis or pay off the state’s bill backlog.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.