Illinois Senate President John Cullerton pressed Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady to formally submit his budget plan today, calling the presumptive GOP nominee's comments on the state budget "inconsistent."
"Maybe he hasn't spent enough time" trying to balance the budget, Cullerton told reporters after a talk for the City Club of Chicago.
Cullerton, the leading Democrat in the Senate, helped pass a plan that would raise the state's income taxes to help cover an estimated $13 billion state shortfall this year. The Illinois House later rejected the plan.
Sen. Brady, a longtime downstate legislator, leads the Republican governor's race by about 250 votes, but the state has not yet declared him the winner over second-place state Sen. Kirk Dillard, a lawmaker from Chicago's suburbs.
Brady's campaign spokeswoman, Jaime Elich, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Brady has repeatedly said he opposes a tax increase and called for a 10 percent cut on state spending.
Cullerton said that since Brady would be the first sitting state legislator to earn a nomination for Illinois governor in more than a century, the public would have a long record by which to judge him.
"He's not an outsider, Sen. Brady," Cullerton told about 200 of Chicago's most influential figures. "He's been there 16 years."
Cullerton said that if Brady would put pen to paper on his budget proposals, he would even help the rival party member write a plan and present it to the Senate.
Yet the likelihood of strong bipartisanship on any budget proposal seems slim this year, when every member of the Illinois House is up for reelection and state Republicans have sturdily opposed previous attempts at a tax increase.
Christine Radogno, the Senate Republican leader, says that if Democrats truly wanted to pass a tax increase — a politically dicey issue in an election year — they could do it alone.
"The Democrats have had complete and total control for seven years," Radogno says.
She suggested that her party is in a philosophical tug of war with Democrats that has affected not just the national political discussion, but the state one as well.
"What is the role of government?" — a question she posed herself — has become the central rhetorical device of Republicans who claim Democrats in Illinois and Washington have unwisely expanded public-sector bureacracy.
In that vein, she says she favors the spirit of a pension-reform proposal Cullerton advanced during his talk today. Alone, pension payments account for about $4.2 billion of the state's unfunded obligations this year.
The Democrat said he would support a two-pronged approach that would raise the age of eligibility for full pension benefits in the state and also limit the number of state employees who are eligible to receive them.
When pressed for details, Cullerton said he might begin negotiations with Republicans using Social Security as a model. Such a plan would mean that employees would need to reach 67 before collecting on the full benefits of their pensions.
He also proposed cutting benefits to some employees. The salary limit for collecting full pension benefits is currently $245,000 a year, a cap Cullerton proposed lowering so that fewer state workers could collect full benefits.
Radogno, referring generally to the proposal, says such changes could help fix a system that is overly burdensome to taxpayers, most of whom do not receive such pension benefits.
"It is only fair that that pension system is similar to what the private sector has too," Radogno says.
Windy Citizen 