Springfield Scrooges

Are you one of the Illinoisans who is in the camp of really upset folks?  Upset at Governor Rauner for all the funding cuts he's made to social programs, that is.

Well, you are venting your anger the wrong direction.

He is doing what must be done to keep the financial situation in the state from getting worse.

The bleeding must be stopped.

Instead, please direct your anger at those politicians who have been in Springfield for years and years.... decades and decades.... for the mess we are in.

They are the Scrooges!

Read below.

Out for now......

Matt

The Real Scrooges in Springfield Don't Include Rauner

Kristen McQueary (Chicago Tribune)

Gov. Bruce Rauner's austere budget plans have been called morally reprehensible.

The mother of an autistic child who testified before lawmakers recently about the services her child will lose due to budget cuts drove home the painful point. This state can't even take care of autistic kids? How sickening.

I was angry. I wanted to print matching T-shirts, load up a bus of protesters and holler at the state Capitol outside a certain someone's office.

No, not Rauner's office. The one a floor above that says, "Michael Madigan."

You could add Senate President John Cullerton's office to my protest route, along with any Illinois lawmaker, Democrat or Republican, who sat complacently during more than a decade of dishonest budgets.

Because we ought to be clear. These are not "Rauner's cuts." They are called "consequences." The hostility aimed at Rauner seems to suggest his budget cuts are motive driven. They're not. They're math driven.

Cuts to a program for autistic children are the consequence of an underfunded budget that the Democrats deliberately approved last year. They knowingly left Springfield with the state's checkbook in the red. State agencies, including those that deal with vulnerable populations, would not have enough money to get through the fiscal year. Rather than staying in Springfield beyond their May 31 adjournment to figure out how to pass a balanced budget, lawmakers hit the campaign trail last year. They spent the summer and fall at political fundraisers and golf outings and receptions.

When Rauner won in November, they knew exactly what he would be facing.

And sure enough, Rauner is portrayed as the cruel Ebenezer Scrooge, picking on disabled children.

But let's back up even further.

From 2003 to 2015, one party controlled the House, Senate and the governor's office. It would be tough to find one year during that time when the Democrats passed a truly balanced budget. Instead, their spending plans relied on gimmicks.

They overestimated revenue growth. They promised to make money by selling state property, such as the Thompson Center and the Illinois Tollway headquarters, which never happened. They borrowed money. They paid less — and sometimes not at all — into the pension funds. And most years, they continued to spend more.

In 2005, the Democrat-led legislature diverted $2.2 billion from the pension funds of teachers and state workers to spend on other needs. That same year, lawmakers spent money on pork projects, including $920,000 for the Chicago Aerospace Education Initiative, whatever that is.

They continued to ignore a pile of unpaid bills that the state owed to vendors. Before Rod Blagojevich took office, the state's unpaid bills totaled $781 million. At the end of fiscal year 2014, it was $2.4 billion with another $2.2 billion to $2.5 billion headed into the IOU pile, according to the Illinois Comptroller's Office.

The state agency that handles professional licensing is so far behind in granting licenses in certain fields, people are forced to wait months before they can start new jobs.

"Deadbeat State" should have become our motto a long time ago.

This budget crisis isn't a new one, by any stretch. But it has worsened under Democrat leadership, despite an additional $30 billion over four years from an income tax hike.

I could go on — let's not forget how they borrowed millions to renovate the Capitol, including $670,000 for copper doors and $323,000 for chandeliers — but you get the idea.

During that time, Illinois voters continued to send the same party back to Springfield. Tribune stories dating to at least the early 2000s all talked of budget gimmicks and a financial crisis. But wouldn't you know it? Madigan and Cullerton won supermajorities in the House and Senate in 2012.

You have to wonder why so much frustration is aimed at Rauner, who has been governor for only four months.

You have to wonder why the Democrats continually get credit for defending the little guy when it's the little guy getting squeezed by all their mismanagement.

You have to wonder why the rhetoric pillorying corporate handouts gets aimed at Rauner when it's the Democrats in this state who have negotiated and sponsored every juicy corporate tax break for more than a decade. The legislature couldn't be bothered to pass a balanced budget in 2011, but it spent an entire fall session on tax breaks for CME Group, a generous campaign donor, and Sears.

Right now, the Democrats are greasing a bill that would hand the state's biggest (and highly profitable) nuclear power provider a bailout by allowing the company to charge consumers more for electricity.

Pardon me, but where are the protests against corporate welfare? Nowhere, when the Democrats sponsor it.

So to the folks whose hearts hurt for the mom with the autistic child, you're right to hurt. You should hurt. It is frustrating and wrong that it has come to this.

Just be sure when you load up your bus of protesters, you end up at the right doorstep.

It should not be Rauner's.