Dem Dissention Building With Spending Pressures
House Speaker Chris Welch
NOTE: This story was originally posted for subscribers only. To receive subscriber-only newsletters and content, click here.
With just three weeks remaining in the spring legislative session, it appears Democrats are facing numerous internal conflicts on just how much money to spend in a new state budget.
In the FY22 budget, which ended June 30, 2022, the state took in over $51 billion in revenue. The current budget, which ends June 30, has mixed projections. The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) projects $51.4 billion in revenue by the end of this year, while the legislative Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA), projects just under $52 billion.
But in the new budget, both GOMB and COGFA project state revenues to drop, potentially significantly. GOMB projects revenue to fall below $50 billion and COGFA projects around $50.4 billion.
That’s half a billion (or more) reduction in revenue with more spending pressures, driven by demands on state programs or efforts by new, liberal lawmakers to enact new spending programs.
“These new guys just can’t help themselves,” one exasperated Republican said Monday. “Between Biden bucks and their tax [increase], they’re going to spend us straight back to Blagojevich.”
Republicans recently raised alarm that a Medicaid-style insurance plan for low-income immigrants is expected to cost between $700-800 million over expectations next year.
Asked last week about the Medicaid hole, Governor JB Pritzker played down the issue.
“We are going to pass a balanced budget. That is what I’m focused on,” he said. “The legislature’s working out the details of what it wants its priorities to be. I’ve put forward my priorities. Generally speaking, the budget that I’ve put forward is the one that will pass with, obviously, some changes here and there by the legislature. That’s an issue that’s going to have to be worked out by committees, by working groups, but, what I know is that we are going to end up with a balanced budget, no matter what.”
Pritzker’s own budget plan included increased spending on items like free community college tuition. Numerous Democrats want to enact a new child tax credit and others are pushing for hundreds of millions more in spending for K-12 education.
The asks add up to billions.
“There’s some internal strife among progressives and centrists,” one lobbyist said. “I don’t know how they manage it.”
House Speaker Chris Welch admitted last week he’s receiving a lot of budget asks.
“There’s only so much money,” he said at a business event. “What I can tell you is we’re going to pass a balanced budget that is fiscally responsible and we’ll be compassionate, too.”
Welch has repeatedly used the “compassionate” term in recent weeks.
“It feels like House Democrats are going to have the harder time wading through the requests,” one Democrat said. “But if House and Senate Democrats can’t get on board, it could be a messy couple of weeks.”
