McCombie on Budget Battle: "No Way to Do Business"
House GOP Leader Tony McCombie (R-Savanna)
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House Republican Leader Tony McCombie (R-Savanna) has spent her first session leading her caucus on the outside looking in of most meaningful debate under the Capitol dome.
Her GOP caucus holds just 40 of 118 seats, the smallest caucus since the cutback amendment in the early 80’s, meaning Democrats don’t need Republican input or votes to pass nearly any legislation, whether controversial or not.
As Democrats have blown past a self-imposed deadline for passage of a new state budget, McCombie and her GOP colleagues have been shut out of the process, left to speculate on why Democrats haven’t been able to finish
“There’s a little or a lot, depending on who you ask, of dysfunction in the [House Democratic] caucus,” McCombie said. “They have a lot of funding priorities to figure out between individual members, and, obviously, leadership.”
McCombie, speaking to The Illinoize Monday night in advance of a Wednesday return to the Statehouse, says Democrats need to take projected decreases in state revenue as a sign to throttle back spending.
“The new spending is a real problem because it’s not going to be sustainable without raising taxes,” she said. “Maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe they would rather have more taxes and more programs, but the problem is people are leaving the state and we’re not growing our tax base. We can be in a lot of trouble if we push for a lot of new spending without the revenue sources to pay for it.”
McCombie, who has served in the House since 2017, met with House Speaker Chris Welch every week through the spring legislative session.
McCombie said she asked Welch every week when they would talk about the budget and was repeatedly told “we will,” though those discussions never came.
“I finally after last Monday had to be resigned to the fact that we weren’t going to talk about the budget in any substantive form,” she said, acknowledging House Republicans have had far more productive conversations with emissaries from Governor JB Pritzker’s office.
McCombie says Republicans know they don’t have the votes to dramatically reduce spending or cut taxes, but she says the GOP has made it clear they want to help pass a budget.
“We want to vote for a budget. We would love to vote for a budget,” she said. “But we do have to be part of the process and we can’t be held hostage for only their ideas. It has to be for the good of the state. They are making this way too hard because they’re letting politics get in the way.”
As Democrats seemingly struggle to lock down a spending plan, we asked McCombie what it would take to help Speaker Welch if he called her to ask for Republican votes.
“I think that ship has sailed this year, for sure,” she said. “I think it would take quite a bit. This is no way to do business.”