Quinn heralded his reduced state budget today at the Thompson Center, where he announced budget cuts focused on education as well as healthcare and social services. The budget also includes heavy borrowing to make pension payments and cover roughly $6 billion in various unpaid bills.
Illinois education and social services historically represent the largest non-pension expenses. Those areas now face reductions of about $241 million and $497 million, respectively.
“I have cut the budget more than any other governor in Illinois history,” Quinn said Thursday.
Quinn also pointed to state lawmakers' failure to present him a budget with substantial cuts already built in. “They didn't want to do that. They didn't want to have their fingerprints on any of that. They wanted to leave it to the governor.”
Quinn previously threatened educators with larger cuts in excess of $1 billion unless lawmakers approved an income tax increase from 3 to 4 percent. Quinn continued to lobby today for the tax increase, which he's dubbed “an education surcharge." But his staff has since acknowledged that revenue would pay for costs other than schools.
Despite cuts that were a fraction of the size originally promised, education lobbyists including the Chicago Teachers Union are calling the reduction "drastic," and say Illinois businesses were unfairly given priority.
“Today, subsidies for developers and kickbacks to corporations won out over educating children and providing all citizens with basic health and social services that make life livable,” says CTU president Karen Lewis.
Quinn also indirectly chided the budget proposal of Bloomington state Sen. Bill Brady, the Republican candidate for governor, who's proposed 10 percent reductions to virtually all state services without raising taxes. Quinn described those cuts as something done in a “chainsaw manner … which would cost us jobs, and I don't believe in that.”
Quinn did, however, rally behind his own budget's intention to reduce the number of state employees to 1,102, which he said gives Illinois the lowest state employee head-count per capita in the country.
Brady's gubernatorial campaign derided the cuts, calling them "too little, too late."
"Despite the $13 billion deficit and increased government spending, Governor Quinn has done nothing to address the structural problems in state government," Brady says.
It still is unclear how the state will handle the remainder of its deficit, only a fraction of which is addressed by Quinn's cuts.
Lawmakers still could override part of the governor's proposal when they return to Springfield. But that may not happen until after November elections.